Steam OS takes first steps towards the mainstream with Steam Music

Steam OS is very much still in beta and adoption has been slow as the first machines running the OS out of the box are still awaiting shipping. Valve has even added disclaimers asking users to not install Steam on any machines that may contain important data. But that doesn’t mean Valve isn’t hard at work making the gaming-centric OS a more multi-functional platform.

To that end, here’s Steam Music , a standalone music player that will play all locally-stored music within the Steam UI. It can also be used in Steam Big Picture mode on a non-Steam OS machine, while a desktop version of the player is in the works.

From the looks of it, Steam Music fits right in the Steam OS scheme of things with a dark menu theme and translucency in backgrounds. It looks pretty much like any modern music player and displays album art prominently. At the moment, it only shows Album and Artist view when sorting music. If you are within a game, the music player is overlaid on top and can be accessed using either a key on the Steam Controller or using a keyboard shortcut to bring up the Big Picture Mode. From here one can manage the current queue, browse all music and change tracks.

Currently Steam Music is in beta and access is being switched on randomly to beta participants. And while it’s not a full-fledged music player one expects in a modern day OS, these are still early days for Steam and this is a good first step towards bringing the OS mainstream.