Steam profiles need a music tab

[Exist]

There's artwork, why not music in mp3 format?

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Who pays for the licenses?

[Exist]

Assuming I understand, anyone who puts the music on their profile understands that their music is public domain, but should be credited?

[Gwarsbane]

Originally posted by Exist:

Assuming I understand, anyone who puts the music on their profile understands that their music is public domain, but should be credited?

Thats not how things do or will work. People will upload any music from anyone. If you play music from lets say Metallica for a bunch of people, that is considered a performance and you need to pay them.

Do you know how much places like Spotify pay per song? Think thousands of dollars, per month or more.

Who do you think the music industry is going to go after, the person with almost no money, or the billion dollar company that enabled them to do that.... well thats a trick question, its both.

[Exist]

I understand now. But what about copyrighted images that people can upload into the artwork section? Isn't that a problem too then?

[LowJack_VA1]

People will upload music they don't own the rights to and try to pass it off as public domain. Wasn't there already a lock down on art work because so many people were putting up artwork and movies for characters they were calling 'Fan Art'? I seem to remember Valve added a special section in the profile report for artwork that was not allowed. Theft of intellectual property is a very big deal.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by Exist:

I understand now. But what about copyrighted images that people can upload into the artwork section? Isn't that a problem too then?

With the amount of labels DMCA striking social media for using unlicensed music, im sure Valve doesn't want to bother.

[Gwarsbane]

Originally posted by Exist:

I understand now. But what about copyrighted images that people can upload into the artwork section? Isn't that a problem too then?

The RIAA is sue happy. just for a single instance of a song being downloaded they have sued and won over 180,000 dollars (they would never collect it but they did win it). Now imagine Valve getting sued because 5000 people listened to it without a license.... Lets just say it was 10,000 dollars per violation, thats 50 million dollars. Just so you know, its not 10,000 dollar though, its much higher. Oh and before you argue that downloading is different from steaming, in the eyes of the RIAA and legally its not. You still downloaded/listened to it. And thats just for 1 person and only 5000 views, there is over a billion accounts on Steam, over 100 million active users a month easily.

As for the images as artwork, yes they are a problem, they are removed when reported. Most of the time its not from a company that can take Valve to court, its generally a single person, but filing court cases is expensive even if you win, it could still cost you more than what you get back from the suit. The RIAA has wasted millions of dollars taking people to court, all just for victories on paper and to scare people as most of the people they have sued have no money.

But if they got their claws into a billion dollar company like Valve, you could kiss Valve goodbye.


So no there will NEVER be uploading of music to play on your profile, or anywhere else. And unless you are willing to pay the thousands of dollars a month for a performance license, there will never be music from the games available to play on the profile or anywhere else either.

Its also a very hated idea because people hate the idea of going to someones profile and being blasted with music, specially if they already have music or something else going. So if Valve ever brought in a feature like this, it would be off by default.

If you want people to listen to music while they are on your profile for what ever reason, then go make a play list on youtube of the songs you want them to hear and put a link to it in your profile at the top.

There is a reason why myspace is pretty much dead, and people hate auto playing sound/music/ads on websites.

[Exist]

Ok I get it. It was just a suggestion but not a great one at that. Thanks for the responses.