The Steam Music Library
I may no longer be new to Steam, but I still haven’t found a use for the Steam Music Player. It’s supposed to be a music library meant to store your video game soundtracks. The music files are stored as MP3 files. It shares many similarities with iTunes. You can listen to soundtracks from your favorite games.
This may sound pointless, but it is a good way to listen to the OSTs without being under pressure from fighting a hard boss or trying to overcome a timed stage. If it is copyrighted, then it might not stay on YouTube. Buying soundtracks is the safe, legal option.
Enjoy listening to the playbacks by selecting tracks from a list using your mouse or linked controller. It also runs on the Steambox if you’d rather stay in your living room. In both Windows and Big Picture mode, you will find a “Music” category under your Steam settings. In the Music Library, to add music files to your directory, click on “add“.
The “Scan Now” button is there to detect any new music you download. Choosing to “Scan at startup” lets Steam scan your library to find MP3 files. It doesn’t matter which system you use; Steam music player runs on Windows, Mac, or Linux laptops. To remove every album from Steam Client, choose Reset Database.
Other options to try adjusting are checking the boxes under “Pause music” to decide when the music should automatically pause. In case you don’t know, voice chatting is initiated under Settings–>Voice. It allows you to talk in private with your friends if your Steam Client is open. You don’t want the music to be too loud by then.
You can also save your scanning activity log, basically the log entries of any Steam Cloud activity. The volume control is extraneous since adjusting the speaker volume does the same thing. You receive a notification whenever a new track begins.
To directly access your music library, go to the Library tab. To the right side of your search box, open up a tab and select “Music“. The second option is to go to the View tab and choose Music Details. To manually change the timeline of a track, select Music Player instead.
According to How-to-Geek, some games already include OSTs pre-installed. Don’t be surprised if they show up in your Steam Music Player. Allow me to demonstrate how this works. Play Album opens up your music player in which you have the tracks listed in order.
Big Picture is more suited to a flatscreen TV plus a controller. Once launched, use your controller or mouse to press the gear-shaped icon to open up the settings. Select Music under Audio should take you to the configure screen. Setup Music Library lets you add new MP3 folders from your C drive.
The Big Picture Mode Music Player
To listen to music in Big Picture mode, visit your Steam Library and select the “Local Music” category shown below. Notice how the albums, artists, and playlists are organized for you. Select an album and you can play either the whole album or just one song from it.
The Steam Music Player appears as a playlist where you are able to shuffle the tracks or skip to the beginning or end as you see fit. If you’re playing music, there will be a music note icon near the top-right of the main screen so you can easily adjust your music player.
I hope this was a helpful tutorial even as I’m aware of the huge number of features that are a part of the Steam Client.
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