Music Player

[KURO]

Since the latest update, I'm unable to locate the music player in the view. Anyone else have this issue?

[d3str0y3r]

It was removed and replaced by the soundtrack player, which can only play soundtracks purchased on Steam.

[Jack Schitt]

There's several topics about this on the Steam Client Beta feedback subforum.

The music player has been removed from the new UI. It's now 'Soundtracks' and it's been modified. Soundtracks only plays soundtracks we have in our Steam Library. It does not allow us to play our own music files.

Your options are:
1. Use some other 3rd party app to play your music: Windows Media Player, VLC (Video LAN), or run YouTube / Pandora / iHeart Radio / Spotify in a browser window on your desktop.

2. Follow these instructions to use the previous UI.

[KURO]

Thanks for the answers.

[Sup]

is there a music player in steam? i didn't know lmao

[Ogami]

Originally posted by Sup:

is there a music player in steam? i didn't know lmao

One of the reasons it was removed and turned into a pure soundtrack player.
Barely anyone used it. And pretty much any external music player was vastly superior in functions and performance.

[AustrAlien2010]

Barely anyone? At least 200,000 people used it:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steammusic/announcements/listing
Just look at the screenshots, and see how much better it was. There were playlists and sorting options.

Here's part of the solution:
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/6516193260167455012/?tscn=1686971014


Only by adding -vgui for a target launch option to your Steam shortcut, you may enjoy your old music player and playlists again. Doing that may cause different issues, but it fixes many issues too.

[Limbert]

Originally posted by AustrAlien2010:

Barely anyone? At least 200,000 people used it:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steammusic/announcements/listing
Just look at the screenshots, and see how much better it was. There were playlists and sorting options.

Here's part of the solution:
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/6516193260167455012/?tscn=1686971014


Only by adding -vgui for a target launch option to your Steam shortcut, you may enjoy your old music player and playlists again. Doing that may cause different issues, but it fixes many issues too.

thanks! i just realized it was gone and i couldnt play my playlists, but now i can. i would never have picked up any of the soundtracks i have on steam if the current music player was all there was... dumb

[Ogami]

Originally posted by AustrAlien2010:

Barely anyone? At least 200,000 people used it:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steammusic/announcements/listing
Just look at the screenshots, and see how much better it was. There were playlists and sorting options.

200k of 70mil monthly users is "barely anyone".
Thats 0.3% of the userbase.

[Random Gamer 1337]

Originally posted by Ogami:

Originally posted by AustrAlien2010:

Barely anyone? At least 200,000 people used it:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steammusic/announcements/listing
Just look at the screenshots, and see how much better it was. There were playlists and sorting options.

200k of 70mil monthly users is "barely anyone".
Thats 0.3% of the userbase.

200k is far from "barely anyone."

[Ogami]

Originally posted by Random Gamer 1337:

200k is far from "barely anyone."

Compared to the Steam userbase it is.
And thats all Valve cares about in the end.
Features that are not used by a large portion of the userbase get nerfed or removed.
This is how Valve always operated in the past.
And 0.3% of users using a feature is too few for Valve.

I have nothing against the music player, for all i care they could have kept it forever in its original form but i seen this whole thing play out with different apps (movie player for example) and features on Steam many times over the years.

[wuddih]

Originally posted by Random Gamer 1337:

Originally posted by Ogami:

200k of 70mil monthly users is "barely anyone".
Thats 0.3% of the userbase.

200k is far from "barely anyone."

It is 132mil unique monthly active, that means the run a game. 1.5+bil registered.

anyway ... that group exists for a long time and does not correlate much with the music player feature per its members anymore. 20-30% are inactive accounts that never joined because of the feature and they are probably suspended. spam- and scambots like to join any official Steam group to look more legit.
a good chunk is from testing phase of the feature, around the same time, groups doubled as a method to participate in new features. It basically was the predecessor to Labs and you had to join groups to participate in stuff but the music player was just a normal beta client update until stable. a lot joined just to join.

the feature does not have 200k users. it is a super-minority and that should not be a surprise. PC, any OS, has vastly better alternatives to listen to music of any sorts. Steams always was and still is very limited and no replacement for a plethora of established software made for this purpose.

it is good that they toned it back

[Artan]

Is there any way to launch the Steam Music player from the steam command console?

I am just trying to think of ways that it might still be accessible from the new Steam UI without there being a UI option for it given that we expect the latest workaround to be closed off in a future upadte!

[Jack Schitt]

I never used the music player. If I wanted to play music while I gamed I ran Windows Media player or Pandora or YouTube Music in a browser window.

Originally posted by Artan:

Is there any way to launch the Steam Music player from the steam command console?

I am just trying to think of ways that it might still be accessible from the new Steam UI without there being a UI option for it given that we expect the latest workaround to be closed off in a future upadte!

The music player is still available in the previous UI. Here are instructions on how to do that.

I haven't tried this with the new UI so i'm not sure if it works. It does work if the previous UI is active. Put this command in a notepad++ document and it will be a link you can click on to launch the music player or you can use Windows Run Command (Winkey+R):

steam://open/musicplayer

In the Steam Console (not SteamCMD, Steam CONSOLE) type:
open steam://open/musicplayer
that also works and opens the music player in the old UI.

[Artan]

Many thanks! I tried on the new UI and sadly it does not open the Steam Music Player and rather than just being hidden it seems to be disabled :(

I guess I will just use the old UI until they block it and then go back to something like an old version of WinAMP.

I use it as an in game Car Stereo when playing racing or driving sims and for that the Steam player was greatt

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

My suggestion is to make suggestions on this, and give better option on soundtrack player.

Example allow us to make our own soundtrack, and select local files we want to play.

As for current work around using -vgui that only temp bandaid, once that removed in the future maybe 2024, or sooner, it won't work anymore as can't revert back once they gut it from the files. That why advocating the suggestion is way better than set it and forget it bandaid.