As you may expect, you can show your interest in joining the beta by joining the Steam Music Steam group linked above. What can users expect? Well, you'll be able to stream your own music library while in a game or at least while you're in Big Picture mode. The group's first announcement includes some nice images and a few details on this.
With Steam Music, you can now listen to your music collection while playing games. Once you’ve pointed Steam to your local music directory, your Steam Library will include Album and Artist views of your collection.
From there you can view and play albums and tracks, manage your queue, and access the Steam Music player by pressing the Guide button on your controller. (No controller? Keyboard and mouse users can access the active player from Big Picture’s main menu.)
From there you can view and play albums and tracks, manage your queue, and access the Steam Music player by pressing the Guide button on your controller. (No controller? Keyboard and mouse users can access the active player from Big Picture’s main menu.)
This seems like it's just one step from Valve offering purchasable music and albums through Steam. From there? Who knows. Perhaps movies and TV shows that you can rent or purchase through Steam. Remember that a big part of this is the integration with SteamOS and Valve will want to make that as robust and appealing as possible to at least keep it somewhat in line with the offerings from the current home consoles out there.
