[IDEA]Steam Music

[Zer_]

A lot of us really enjoy Steam. There's a large community of gamers that come together through Steam. The following is an idea I came up with in the past half hour or so. It's a fresh idea, and as such I'll be fleshing it out throughout the course of this thread.

The Basic Idea

Steam Music is mostly what the name implies. It's a platform which offers digital purchases for music. Music will be made available at 320kbps on MP3 format. There will be no DRM that comes with these songs. The only addition is a "Music" folder that is added to your Steam folder. Other possible formats could include Lossless FLAC, etc...

Music can be played in Steam directly using a build-in music player. This music player can easily be controlled by media keys on the keyboard, or through Steam's built-in Steam Overlay for supported games. The Steam Music folder must also be accessible by 3rd party music players!

Sell music from other Record Labels so people can purchase songs from their favorite artists right on Steam. Offer Steam Music Bundles containing bundles of similar-sounding artists of the same genre.

Allow users to sample new artists.

But Wait! There's More!

Sound Loop packs made available by other artists or groups of artists. Users should be able to purchase sound loops available in .wav format to make remixes of current songs, or concoct new songs using the provided sound loops and other sound loops.

Act as an indie record label for up and coming indie artists. Allow these artists to distribute approved albums through your marketplace giving them a form of income, and providing for your own piece of the pie as well.

Allow users to download CD images allowing your users to literally download an .img file that can then be burned to give users an actual CD containing lossless .wav files.

The Remix Initiative

Certain artists can make sound loops available for their tracks or albums to allow others to remix their songs. Steam should host contests (at the approval of the artists) to allow users to remix and submit their tune to be rated by other Steam users. All songs must be approved to be entered into the contests, so no trolling. Prizes could be free software, free swag, and being featured in remix compilations available to purchase on the Steam Music store.

The Possibilities

Develop your record label. Invest in the proper facilities to allow artists to come in and record an actual CD. It is then printed out and distributed to purchasers around North America (and the world given proper import fees). Through this, Valve can use said facilities to take their own game music to the next level.

Any comments or criticisms on the idea are welcome.

 

[emeraldrafael]

SO it would still be old music? Cause I dont know anyone that sells Old CDs. Otherwise, you're just talking about making your own music.

Right now, the Music Industry probably wouldnt go for this. Piracy of music is alot tougher on the industry then in Games, and threat of selling used CDs inst on the same level video game publishers take it.

 

[Zer_]

SO it would still be old music? Cause I dont know anyone that sells Old CDs. Otherwise, you're just talking about making your own music.

Right now, the Music Industry probably wouldnt go for this. Piracy of music is alot tougher on the industry then in Games, and threat of selling used CDs inst on the same level video game publishers take it.

From my OP:

Sell music from other Record Labels so people can purchase songs from their favorite artists right on Steam. Offer Steam Music Bundles containing bundles of similar-sounding artists of the same genre.

That should answer your queries concerning music from other artists.

Also, there are tons of music stores that offer tracks at 320kbps with no DRM.

 

[emeraldrafael]

Snip

Sorry, Id ont see it happening. Especially not with iTunes holding their monopoly on the music market. And what about the infamous Steam Sales? I'm pretty sure artists wont appreciate their music at whatever the discount rate is.

Steams' large market is mostly selling older games, that way its not as bad as Gamestop (though I dont find Gamestop bad. They're a business, they found a formula, and people hate them for it), you cant really do that with music. Music doesnt devolve in value and get sequels.

 

[olicon]

That's a great idea. Would be better if it comes with a player so those songs (or any songs that you put in the music folder) can be played while you play games.

 

[Zer_]

I think a steam music player in general is a great idea, as it's a bit hard to change tracks while playing games.

I can't see Valve selling music though, unless it was soundtracks to games. Valve is still a games company, and I think they would stick to that.

They're already considering streaming TV shows and Movies. Besides, this is a potential money maker.

Also, iTunes?! iTunes is a joke. Their MP3 quality is shit. The only real reasons why iTunes is so popular are the fact that most iPod users are forced into it, and it's the online store that got the most publicity. Offering gamers an easy to access alternative with an in-game player (which was already talked about in my OP, read it before commenting please), then yeah it'll totally work. The Steam Music store would self-promote through Steam itself to millions of users.

It's not hard to vision really.

 

[emeraldrafael]

iTunes may be a joke, but its still the best music sharing format online (thats legal). you're talking about making a monopoly, which would (and should) immediately be shut down. Also, what are you going to tell all the iTunes users? Or Apple? Cause they wont take this lying down.

 

[Zer_]

iTunes may be a joke, but its still the best music sharing format online (thats legal). you're talking about making a monopoly, which would (and should) immediately be shut down. Also, what are you going to tell all the iTunes users? Or Apple? Cause they wont take this lying down.

And iTunes isn't already a monopoly? You said it yourself. Adding some good competition through Steam would work.

 

[emeraldrafael]

iTunes may be a joke, but its still the best music sharing format online (thats legal). you're talking about making a monopoly, which would (and should) immediately be shut down. Also, what are you going to tell all the iTunes users? Or Apple? Cause they wont take this lying down.

And iTunes isn't already a monopoly? You said it yourself. Adding some good competition through Steam would work.

I said best, not only. Besides, iTunes won their monopoly charge battle. I was talking about Steam being the monopoly (and dont dare say it wont). And again, what are you going to tell i-whatever users when they have to get a whole new player?

 

[Scars Unseen]

I refuse to pay for music in a lossy format. Start offering albums in FLAC and I'm on board(my favorite online distributors give free FLAC downloads with physical disc orders).

 

[lacktheknack]

Snip

Sorry, Id ont see it happening. Especially not with iTunes holding their monopoly on the music market. And what about the infamous Steam Sales? I'm pretty sure artists wont appreciate their music at whatever the discount rate is.

Steams' large market is mostly selling older games, that way its not as bad as Gamestop (though I dont find Gamestop bad. They're a business, they found a formula, and people hate them for it), you cant really do that with music. Music doesnt devolve in value and get sequels.

Steam only does those sales with permission of the creator. If an artist asks that their song become available for ten cents (and they would), then Steam can arrange intense music sales.

Hey, I'm all for fighting Apple's chokehold on music.

 

[Zer_]

iTunes may be a joke, but its still the best music sharing format online (thats legal). you're talking about making a monopoly, which would (and should) immediately be shut down. Also, what are you going to tell all the iTunes users? Or Apple? Cause they wont take this lying down.

And iTunes isn't already a monopoly? You said it yourself. Adding some good competition through Steam would work.

I said best, not only. Besides, iTunes won their monopoly charge battle. I was talking about Steam being the monopoly (and dont dare say it wont). And again, what are you going to tell i-whatever users when they have to get a whole new player?

Best?

You said this:

Sorry, Id ont see it happening. Especially not with iTunes holding their monopoly on the music market. And what about the infamous Steam Sales? I'm pretty sure artists wont appreciate their music at whatever the discount rate is.

I don't even see the word best here. I only see Monopoly. Steam is already pretty much the iTunes of digital game sales. They hold a massive chunk of the online sales market. Other retailers are only catching up because they are using a lot of Steam's ideas. It's not just with older games either...

I refuse to pay for music in a lossy format. Start offering albums in FLAC and I'm on board(my favorite online distributors give free FLAC downloads with physical disc orders).

You'll notice that I actually said FLAC is definitely something to consider. I know FiXT doesn't offer FLAC with their disc orders, but they do give 320kbps mp3s. You'd have to wait until you received the actual disc before ripping it.

My solution to this was allowing users to download a disc image of the album that they can burn and then rip the album.

 

[Yokai]

Interesting, but it sounds like licensing hell. Besides, imagine the number of people who would start complaining that Steam is turning into iTunes. At best, they'd come in second, and it's not like they need the cash. If you already have a monopoly, trying to establish another while directly fighting off a competitor is not a sound business move.

 

[Zer_]

Interesting, but it sounds like licensing hell. Besides, imagine the number of people who would start complaining that Steam is turning into iTunes. At best, they'd come in second, and it's not like they need the cash. If you already have a monopoly, trying to establish another while directly fighting off a competitor is not a sound business move.

I don't see Steam becoming a music monopoly. Just giving gamers a better source for their music.

 

[Scars Unseen]

iTunes may be a joke, but its still the best music sharing format online (thats legal). you're talking about making a monopoly, which would (and should) immediately be shut down. Also, what are you going to tell all the iTunes users? Or Apple? Cause they wont take this lying down.

And iTunes isn't already a monopoly? You said it yourself. Adding some good competition through Steam would work.

I said best, not only. Besides, iTunes won their monopoly charge battle. I was talking about Steam being the monopoly (and dont dare say it wont). And again, what are you going to tell i-whatever users when they have to get a whole new player?

Best?

You said this:

Sorry, Id ont see it happening. Especially not with iTunes holding their monopoly on the music market. And what about the infamous Steam Sales? I'm pretty sure artists wont appreciate their music at whatever the discount rate is.

I don't even see the word best here. I only see Monopoly. Steam is already pretty much the iTunes of digital game sales. They hold a massive chunk of the online sales market. Other retailers are only catching up because they are using a lot of Steam's ideas. It's not just with older games either...

I refuse to pay for music in a lossy format. Start offering albums in FLAC and I'm on board(my favorite online distributors give free FLAC downloads with physical disc orders).

You'll notice that I actually said FLAC is definitely something to consider. I know FiXT doesn't offer FLAC with their disc orders, but they do give 320kbps mp3s. You'd have to wait until you received the actual disc before ripping it.

My solution to this was allowing users to download a disc image of the album that they can burn and then rip the album.

I would still rather have FLAC. FLAC files can be inflated and burned as a CD with no loss of quality and half of the bandwidth use of a downloaded disc image.

 

[Yokai]

Interesting, but it sounds like licensing hell. Besides, imagine the number of people who would start complaining that Steam is turning into iTunes. At best, they'd come in second, and it's not like they need the cash. If you already have a monopoly, trying to establish another while directly fighting off a competitor is not a sound business move.

I don't see Steam becoming a music monopoly. Just giving gamers a better source for their music.

I get that. I guess my point is that I don't think the company would really benefit from intruding on iTunes' territory. They'd be a bit late to the game, is all. I do like the idea--I'd certainly make use of it if it came about--but considering the resources Valve would have to pour into it (marketing, designing a brand-new interface, licensing deals with hundreds of labels, etc.) I just don't think it would be economically viable for them in the long run.

 

[Trolldor]

Why not just integrate a music player with the steam overlay letting you play music you've already got on your computer? All they're doing is adding secondary costs.

 

[Katherine Kerensky]

Luckily, my keyboard has various buttons to control a media player, so I can pause/play, next track, previous track, etc, while playing my games.
But it is a good idea for those who don't have such keyboards.
Plus, it could possibly help find some music to buy, if they offered music from multiple countries with different languages.

 

[Zer_]

Interesting, but it sounds like licensing hell. Besides, imagine the number of people who would start complaining that Steam is turning into iTunes. At best, they'd come in second, and it's not like they need the cash. If you already have a monopoly, trying to establish another while directly fighting off a competitor is not a sound business move.

I don't see Steam becoming a music monopoly. Just giving gamers a better source for their music.

I get that. I guess my point is that I don't think the company would really benefit from intruding on iTunes' territory. They'd be a bit late to the game, is all. I do like the idea--I'd certainly make use of it if it came about--but considering the resources Valve would have to pour into it (marketing, designing a brand-new interface, licensing deals with hundreds of labels, etc.) I just don't think it would be economically viable for them in the long run.

FiXT is an indie record label. They produce, and sell their music. They also feature music from other record labels as well. They perform work for games and feature songs in trailers. Valve could also offer the latter services to other companies as well. FiXT is owned by Klayton Celldweller. It is a private company, much like Valve.

id Software has (or had) a full sound production room where entire tracks could be recorded. You can thank Trent Reznor from NIN for that (I believe so. He did work on Quake). A lot of publishers and some game companies already have small audio studios in their company to do sound work. Whether or not Valve has any of this, who knows. The equipment would certainly be worth it to Valve.

Valve is coming close to being worth a Billion Dollars (if not more). To say they don't have the funding (or could not get the funding) to do this is naive. It's also ridiculously pessimistic.

Adding a music player to Steam would be a rather easy undertaking. Steam also supports HTML pages (I'm not sure about Flash. The Steam Store is either Flash based or HTML). You can theoretically browse the web with Steam's built-in browser. Building an effective music library or music browsing service isn't that difficult either, especially when you consider what Steam already has built into its core.

The most expensive part would be hosting space, which Valve doesn't have any problems with since they're already planning to stream movies and TV shows on Steam.

 

[Anarchemitis]

If Valve wanted to compete with Apple over the whole iTunes bit, they would've set about it already, and gone head to head with the biggest competition a long time ago before it became massively popular, when they would have had a chance.