Valve's Steam Music Player Finally Out Of Beta

By Kevin Parrish
published

Back in February, Valve Software launched the beta version of its Steam Music Player. All customers needed to do was point the software to MP3s stored on the customer's computer. To start and control playback, users merely pulled up the Steam Overlay and loaded songs without having to leave the game.

Now Valve has opened up Steam Music Player to all customers. To celebrate the launch, the company is now offering soundtracks for free including Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2, Portal, Portal 2 and the Free To Play soundtrack. The company is also knocking 75 percent off of these Half-Life games until October 1.

To access the Music Player on the desktop, head to "View" and then "Music Player." Once the Music Player launches, hit the icon with six squares to bring up the "Settings" window. Here you should find several directories already listed, such as the "Music" folder in Windows 7/8. Users can add and remove directories, scan the hard drive for music, configure the player to pause music such as when you're using the voice chat feature and more.

The launch of Steam Music Player could be seen as a stepping stone towards a full-fledged music store for both the Steam desktop client and SteamOS. The company hints to this on the SteamOS webpage, which states that the studio is currently working with many content providers to bring music, movies and TV shows to Steam customers.

"We'd love to hear your feedback, feature requests, and ideas for where Steam Music should go next," Valve said in a recent update. "Stay tuned, as we plan to add more features so you can experience Steam music in new ways. We're just getting started."

News of the Music Player arrives after Valve Software announced the launch of the Steam Discovery Update, which was designed to make the shopping experience more productive. That means offering a "smarter" Home page that provides recommendations based on purchases, the customer's recently played games and more.

The updated marketplace also now includes "extremely detailed" filters to help customers easily find the game they want. Eventually, the Steam Search filters will help customers discover music, as well.

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Kevin Parrish
9 Comments Comment from the forums
  • TechyInAZ
    Been using the music player since it was in beta, it's very nice. However, the only thing I hope they put in is the ability to forward or rewind the track your on, since you can't do that as of now.
    Reply
  • nukemaster
    Used it for a bit to test.

    I think i will still be sticking to Winamp since it plays everything, has a hardware accelerated(OpenAL for Audigy/X-fi users) audio plugin to bypass the windows mixer and works well with my Logitech keyboard media keys. It is still a great idea and faster(unless you use fake fulls screen in games) than alt tabbing to change songs.
    Reply
  • Creme
    I hope this doesn't mean DRM for music is coming back.

    The growth of Steam can be scary at times.
    Reply
  • nukemaster
    At current I think they are just providing mp3 files with no DRM.

    It is more of a feature to have one less thing running or more integrated into steam. The more they add, the more users will have with steamOS out of the box.
    Reply
  • Pikime
    My media keys don't affect games at all and cut straight through to iTunes meaning i have music and control over it already so this doesn't seem worth it just yet. but if they added in home streaming of music like they do their games then that would be different
    Reply
  • wiinippongamer
    Hail Gaben
    Reply
  • ALANMAN
    Does it have FLAC support? Not all of us use MP3s. I might consider using it if it can 'play everything." Otherwise, Winamp suits me just fine.
    Reply
  • nukemaster
    14250002 said:
    My media keys don't affect games at all and cut straight through to iTunes meaning i have music and control over it already so this doesn't seem worth it just yet. but if they added in home streaming of music like they do their games then that would be different
    I think the in home streaming does work for that.
    It was in the FAQ
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steammusic/discussions/1/558746995181234479/
    Reply
  • xXDahChubChubXx
    I think they should make it so it lists songs as an option like albums and artists is and when the song is playing having a progress bar so you can see where the song is up to and so you can jump through the song.
    Reply