Author Topic: Steam Music Player and soundtracks released  (Read 3181 times)

Offline idolminds

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Steam Music Player and soundtracks released
« on: Wednesday, September 24, 2014, 05:19:40 PM »
Hey look at that.

I haven't had the chance to update my client so I can't tell you what its like, though from other peoples comments it seems like the player is pretty bare bones. Possibly no seek bar?

At the link you'll find they made some Valve game soundtracks available for free. HL1, HL2 and episodes, Portal, and Portal 2. Also the soundtrack to the documentary Free To Play. Note you need to own the games to get the soundtracks (the documentary is free, so there you go). One troublesome bit is apparently the soundtracks are considered DLC. So you have to manually go through to the soundtrack pages and "buy" them to add them to the account. Annoying but ok. The real downside is apparently the only way to download the soundtrack is to install the entire game. Yup.

EDIT: Oh yeah I forgot to list the supported formats. Better grab a cup of coffee, this might take a while. Ok...here we go.

MP3

End of list. Not even WAV files, man. I thought they were beta testing this.
« Last Edit: Wednesday, September 24, 2014, 07:55:08 PM by idolminds »

Offline gpw11

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Re: Steam Music Player and soundtracks released
« Reply #1 on: Wednesday, September 24, 2014, 07:33:29 PM »
What the fuck?  Why?  Who gives a shit?

Offline idolminds

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Re: Steam Music Player and soundtracks released
« Reply #2 on: Wednesday, September 24, 2014, 07:47:14 PM »
Those are some great questions that I do not know the answers to.

Offline Quemaqua

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Re: Steam Music Player and soundtracks released
« Reply #3 on: Wednesday, September 24, 2014, 08:23:35 PM »
I have enough shitty music players. I don't need another.

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline Cobra951

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Re: Steam Music Player and soundtracks released
« Reply #4 on: Thursday, September 25, 2014, 08:05:40 AM »
It does seem silly.  Who doesn't already have some form of MP3 playback in every device capable of it?  When I first read the thread title, I assumed it meant a dedicated player for music released on the Steam service.  But if they're simply releasing the tracks in MP3 format, who cares?

Offline Xessive

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Re: Steam Music Player and soundtracks released
« Reply #5 on: Thursday, September 25, 2014, 09:06:04 AM »
For me, more than anything else, its'a great way to manage soundtracks that come with games that I bought; I rarely buy soundtracks individually, they're usually bundled in a deluxe edition of some sort.

By default Steam reads the Steam Music folder, which is now apparently the default location for any music or soundtrack DLC, but you can add your own personal music folder if you want to listen to tracks while you're playing.

It is odd they it only plays MP3, since that was an issue that was brought up in the discussions during the beta. I suspect this might have to do with playing music during gameplay and whether or not it could detriment performance. I expect they'll gradually add formats since some of the soundtracks that are included with games are in FLAC and OGG formats.



Personally, I love the way it automatically displayed all my game soundtracks instantly. No more digging around in the Steam folders.

When I'm listening to music in-game Steam Music means not having to alt-tab out to change tracks etc. on my default player. Plus, Skyrim still has problems with alt-tabbing so it is not actually an option there. Shift-tabbing to the overlay is a tad easier and doesn't disrupt the game.

I think Steam Music was a logical step in Steam's development. It enhances the overlay, giving you more control without leaving the game (or Steam for that matter). And on the business side, it gives Valve another venue to provide properly organized soundtrack and music integration rather than have it arbitrarily labeled as generic DLC.

Offline Cobra951

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Re: Steam Music Player and soundtracks released
« Reply #6 on: Friday, September 26, 2014, 07:59:01 AM »
So, they're basically luring Steam users into making their player their media center, a la iTunes?  If all the Steam-related music pops into it automagically, and it makes listening to music while playing Steam-tied games easier, I can see that being the intention.

FLAC and OGG don't stress my 14-year-old PC with 9-year-old tech one bit.  I can't imagine them posing any issues during any gameplay.

Offline idolminds

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Re: Steam Music Player and soundtracks released
« Reply #7 on: Friday, September 26, 2014, 09:55:28 AM »
Yeah I dont think that is the reason. Steam has a built in web browser you can use while a game is running and I imagine that is going to use more resources than playing back some more audio formats.

I also think this feature has been added because of SteamOS and Valve wanting to have Steam PCs in the living room. If you want people to use big picture mode then you dont want them to try and switch out of it to adjust their music player. Keeping that internal to Steam and usable on a controller is probably why this exists.

Offline Cobra951

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Re: Steam Music Player and soundtracks released
« Reply #8 on: Friday, September 26, 2014, 03:59:27 PM »
That does make sense.

Offline Xessive

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Re: Steam Music Player and soundtracks released
« Reply #9 on: Sunday, September 28, 2014, 09:34:20 AM »
I don't know what the reason is, but audio playback and decompression seem to be such factors with several other developers I figured it could possibly be among the reasons.

Audio playback performance was cited as one of the reasons that Respawn Entertainment left the audio for the PC version of Titanfall completely uncompressed, making the game take up ~50GB of disk space; the audio files along were around 35GB.

Maybe they just weren't ready for multiple formats on release.

It makes a lot of sense that they're centralizing Steam (and Steam OS) as an easy "one for all" interface.