Steam gives players option to buy soundtracks without owning a game

Steam is making a change that allows the purchase of game soundtracks without the purchaser having to own the relevant game. Until now, soundtracks were considered DLC, which necessitated purchasing the game.

Valve says the changes have already been made, but plans to release “the features in a broader way” on January 20. The soundtracks get their own ‘app status’ that makes them separate from the games. Furthermore, the soundtracks are still available in the form of MP3 tracks, but they can also be offered in higher quality file formats, such as flac or wav.

The company behind Steam has also created a new interface for the soundtracks and owners can more easily find music-related content, such as album covers. In addition, buyers can manage their soundtrack from the Steam library and configure a separate music folder where all soundtracks will be located, so that they are not placed with the individual locations of the corresponding games.

It becomes easier for developers to sell soundtracks, partly because they can upload the music entirely via the partner website. In addition, they can also sell soundtrack content if the corresponding game is not available on Steam.

The changes only apply to new releases. For the time being, the many soundtracks available via Steam are therefore shown as DLC. Developers need to convert their game soundtracks to the new app type.

Until now, a game actually had to be installed before the accompanying soundtrack could be downloaded. There was also no separate category for soundtracks in Steam. That meant that the music had to be looked up either locally on the hard drive or in Steam via the DLC tab of the relevant game.