Play your own music right from within Steam while gaming

Feb 3, 2014 19:09 GMT  ·  By

Valve has just revealed the Steam Music feature for the Steam digital distribution service and the SteamOS operating system, allowing gamers to play their own music while experiencing different titles.

Valve teased some time ago that big changes were coming to Steam, and now the studio has revealed one of them, in the form of Steam Music, a new feature that should make it much easier for gamers to play their own songs when experiencing a game.

According to the Steam Music community group, the new feature will automatically play music while inside games if it's accessed from the Steam Big Picture mode or from the SteamOS operating system, provided it's pointed to the directory in which the user keeps his music.

From there, the music can be played right from the Steam Overlay, without having to alt-tab out of games and into the dedicated music applications.

"The Steam Music Beta is coming soon to Big Picture and SteamOS interfaces, with desktop features soon to follow. With Steam Music, you can now listen to your music collection while playing games. Once you’ve pointed Steam to your local music directory, your Steam Library will include Album and Artist views of your collection," the studio said.

"From there you can view and play albums and tracks, manage your queue, and access the Steam Music player by pressing the Guide button on your controller. (No controller? Keyboard and mouse users can access the active player from Big Picture’s main menu.) Once in-game, the music player follows you via the Steam overlay, where you can manage your current playlist, browse your collection and listen to whatever suits your mood."

Those who want to enter the Steam Music beta stage need to go to the dedicated community group and join it. Invitations will be sent in waves, however.

"With this beta, we’re getting started with what we believe to be the most fundamental set of features to offer a great music listening experience within Steam. As always, our next steps for the feature will be influenced by your beta feedback, so please share your feature requests, thoughts, and experiences in the music discussions. Happy listening!"

Expect to hear more about the Steam Music beta soon.