Microsoft will stop selling and streaming music from their store on 31 December

[sibilant]

They’re replacing Groove Music Pass with Spotify.

For MusicBrainz I guess this means that all Windows Store URIs for artists and albums will die since Microsoft is shuttering the music store.

More info: Groove Music and Spotify: FAQ

[Freso]

Question now is, is it worth keeping the Windows Store URIs around for the IDs? Or should we just dump them all?

[HibiscusKazeneko]

Question now is, is it worth keeping the Windows Store URIs around for the IDs? Or should we just dump them all?

I’d wait until the store shuts down and then remove them. I’ve done that for at least one other website that closed down.

[sibilant]

From what I read in the FAQ, it seems unlikely that release URIs will map and redirect to Spotify. Is there some other website that can map Windows Store release IDs to something useful?

Windows Store is one of the less significant music marketplaces; documenting that a release was available there seems like trivia.

[WovenTales]

Definitely less significant, and I agree that it’s not worth keeping the info on general digital releases on all stores. It might still be worth checking for any releases exclusive to that platform, though, few as they may be, and any with branding specific to it that would add a different release to the group. Easier said than done, but take note of what’s actually notable before it disappears, and don’t worry about the majority of it that doesn’t add much new.

[Freso]

Windows Store is one of the less significant music marketplaces; documenting that a release was available there seems like trivia.

Trivia to one person, might be critical essential information to someone else. That Spank Hopkins played the drums on Israeli Geography 101 is also “trivia”.

One of the things MusicBrainz (and MusicBrainz identifiers) are in a good position of is functioning as a “rosetta stone” for music services, storing/keeping identifiers of any kind is essential for this function. (Whether Windows Store IDs are worth of keeping around or not, I don’t know.)

[rdswift]

Wouldn’t it make sense to keep them but put an end date on the relationship, or is that not possible? As I heard said before, one never knows what information some future historian may require.

[yeeeargh]

In general I’m also in favor of keeping links / relationships. Just set them as ended with a proper end date. That way you might still be able to look those pages up in the Wayback Machine or similar archives.
I’ve seen some arguments against that, as dead links might mess up the links in the sidebar. But that is just some technical problem which can (easily) be fixed.

[Freso]

I posted about it on Archiveteam’s Reddit as well, in case anyone there wants to make sure all the information in Groove is preserved:

Groove Music shutting down on Dec. 31st • r/Archiveteam