The Steam Music Player, which has been in beta for a while now, has finally received its official launch. The program allows you to access your music through the Steam Overlay. It’s essentially a mini music player, similar to Apple’s iTunes mini player, that lets Steam users play and search through their music collection by album, artist, or track name without having to exit the game they are playing. The program can also scan the user’s computer and find music files for playback. This includes anything on iTunes libraries and any of the soundtrack DLC that has been downloaded off of Steam.
Currently the Steam Music Player only recognizes MP3s for playback. According to their announcement and FAQ, Valve plans on adding more features to the system, including support for more audio formats. This will be a much welcomed improvement, since many people, myself included, have music libraries that contain higher quality audio files, not just MP3s. Even with its current limitations, it’s nice to have easy access to your music collection, without having to exit the game or having to play the game in a windowed mode.
To help celebrate the official release, Valve has also made their soundtrack DLC available for free for people who already own the games. So if you’ve ever wanted to grab the soundtracks for Portal, Portal 2, or the Half-Life series, now is your chance. The offer on the soundtrack DLC expires on October 1st, so grab the albums while you can.
Source: Steam
