Groove Music running on Android.

Microsoft is retiring its Groove Music apps for iOS and Android on December 1.

The cross-platform music apps lost a lot of their purpose when Microsoft closed its Groove music store and subscription service last year. They still retained some value, however, as they could play music stored and synchronized on OneDrive. That will end on the retirement date, with Microsoft saying that not only will the application cease to be available to install but also that existing installations will stop working.

When it shut down its store, Microsoft suggested that users turn to Spotify as an alternative. This time around, the company is pointing users at Google Play Music and iTunes Match. The OneDrive app itself also has some limited music playback capabilities of its own. Overall, however, the net effect of this change is that there’s now little point in using OneDrive for music storage, as the best playback application for OneDrive-stored music is being discontinued.