With Cortana built into Windows 10, users have a powerful assistant to help send emails, find documents, answer questions, and generally be a great productivity asset. But the personal assistant also has a lighter side; cracking jokes, singing songs, and being your personal DJ, which is what we’re going to be talking about today.
Cortana is an expert in music. Whenever you hear a good song playing, and you want to know what it’s called, just ask Cortana “what’s playing”, and within moments, you’ll have answer, and a direct link to buy the song from the Windows Store.
The part about Cortana being a personal DJ is true. You can ask Cortana to play songs from your music library by artist, album, song title, genre, as well as your custom-made playlists. It doesn’t stop at simply playing songs, Cortana can then control your music using commands to pause, resume, play the next or previous tracks, or shuffle playback. This app happens as you continue with whatever else you were doing, on or away from the computer. No distractions, and no interruptions to your workflow.
Here are examples of music commands that you can use with Cortana on Windows 10:
Song: “Play Life in Color”
Artist: “Play Gavin DeGraw”, “Play songs by Gavin DeGraw”
Album: “Play Blurryface”, “Play album Blurryface”
Genre: “Play jazz”, “Play rock music”
Playlist: “Play Sit Back and Relax playlist”
Pause: “Pause music”, “Stop playing”
Resume: “Resume music”
Next: “Play the next track”
Previous: “Play the previous track”
Shuffle: “Shuffle the music”, “Shuffle off”
NOTE: A good, high-quality microphone can make or break your experience with Cortana on Windows 10. If you’re having trouble with Cortana hearing you, be sure to check out our guide to getting Cortana to hear you loud and clear.