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You can now get standalone game soundtracks on Steam

No more silly DLC rules

Steam games have offered up soundtracks as DLC add-ons for ages, and the platform’s even got a built-in music player to let you listen to those songs. But up until this point, that ‘DLC’ moniker has meant that you could only buy soundtracks if you’d already purchased the games they’re attached to – now that’s about to change.

Valve’s launcher now has a ‘music’ app type, as SteamDB notes on Twitter. That means you’ll be able to buy and download soundtracks without owning the base game, and the update introduces additional metadata for those tracks. The catch is that this is not being automatically applied to all existing soundtracks – it’s up to individual developers to manually update their listings for the feature.

One early soundtrack to support the feature is for the indie action-survival game, Die Young. You can see the track listing on SteamDB, and Steam will allow you to purchase the soundtrack without owning the game – even though it’s still technically listed as ‘DLC.’ Something under the old system, like My Friend Pedro, does not have that data and will error out on the store if you try to buy the music without the game.

This should all make actually using Steam’s soundtrack downloads way more convenient. Assuming developers get on board with the updates, that is.

The big Steam update of the moment is Remote Play Together, which lets you play couch multiplayer games online – perfect for those long-distance relationships you’re continuing to get worse at maintaining.