Heyyyyy fellow gamer with excellent taste! 👋 After spending waaaaay too many hours hunting down game soundtracks over the past decade (instead of, ya know, actually finishing the games lol), I figured I’d save you some time and share all my secret spots.

Quick backstory – I’ve been obsessed with game music since I heard the Chrono Trigger soundtrack back in the day. Like, I’m talking full-on addiction where I’d leave games running in the background just to hear the music loop. My roommates HATED me for it. Worth it tho.

Fun fact: In college I once wrote an entire 20-page paper while listening to the Skyrim soundtrack on repeat. Professor asked why my essay had so many references to dragons and sweetrolls. WHOOPS.

LEGIT places to get free game soundtracks

1. Official sources (duh, but people forget these!)

  • Bandcamp – Lots of indie devs put their soundtracks up for free/name your price here. I’ve found GEMS this way. The Hollow Knight soundtrack is like $10 but worth every penny.
  • SoundCloud – Some composers upload their stuff directly! Darren Korb (Hades/Bastion) has awesome tracks there.
  • Composer websites – People like Jake Kaufman (Shovel Knight) sometimes have free downloads on their personal sites
  • Game promotions – When the Epic Games Store was trying to compete with Steam, they gave away Control + soundtrack for FREE. Got it and didn’t even play the game for like 6 months but listened to the soundtrack constantly lmao

2. The “Official official” company stuff

  • Nintendo Music Program – FINALLY Nintendo has a YouTube channel with official music. Only took them 40 years! 🙄
  • Square Enix puts some stuff on Spotify/Apple Music – not free to own but free to stream if you have those services
  • Ubisoft occasionally drops free soundtrack downloads during game anniversaries (got the entire Assassin’s Creed Black Flag soundtrack this way!)
  • Riot Games – Say what you want about League of Legends, but all their music is free on their website and it’s FIRE

PRO TIP: Follow game composers on Twitter/X. They OFTEN tweet out when their soundtracks are available for free during promotions. That’s how I scored the entire Celeste soundtrack for nothing!

My top picks for COMPLETELY FREE game soundtracks

These are 100% legal free downloads (not pirated garbage), and I’ve personally gotten all these:

  • Fez – Sometimes Disasterpeace makes this “pay what you want” including $0. Absolutely brilliant chiptune-meets-ambient soundtrack.
  • Tangledeep – Goes on sale for free regularly. Incredible fantasy RPG music.
  • Epic Games Weekly Free – Check every Thursday. Sometimes includes soundtracks with the free games.
  • Hacknet OST – Frequently free during Steam sales. Dark, glitchy, electronic goodness.
  • Subnautica – Occasionally goes free. Haunting underwater ambient tracks.
  • GOG Free Games – Like Epic, they occasionally include soundtracks with free games.

Last year I downloaded the Crypt of the NecroDancer soundtrack during a promotion, and I swear it improved my running times by like 30%. Something about that beat just makes you move faster! My gym playlist is like 90% game soundtrack bangers now.

When games include the soundtrack files (secret hack!)

OK here’s something most guides won’t tell you – TONS of PC games already have their soundtracks sitting right there in the installation folder, usually as high-quality OGG or WAV files!

I’ve extracted the soundtracks from these games legally (since I own them):

  • Stardew Valley – Look in [Steam folder]\steamapps\common\Stardew Valley\Content\Music
  • Terraria – The music files are just sitting in the installation directory
  • Undertale – Check the “AUDIO” folder in the game directory
  • Minecraft – The .ogg files are in the resources folder of the .minecraft directory
  • FTL: Faster Than Light – resources/music contains all those amazing Ben Prunty tracks

MY ACTUAL METHOD: If you own a game on Steam, right-click it, go to Properties > Local Files > Browse. Then just poke around for folders named “music,” “audio,” “sound,” etc. You’d be SHOCKED how many games have easily accessible soundtrack files. I’ve built a 200GB music library this way from games I already own!

Making your own game music mixes

So once you’ve got all this music, here’s what I do with it:

  • Work playlists – I sorted game tracks by intensity. Low intensity = coding/writing work. High intensity = deadline mode!
  • D&D background music – I run a weekly game and have specific playlists for taverns, combat, spooky dungeons, etc.
  • Sleep mix – The ambient tracks from Journey, Flower, and Abzu are PERFECT for falling asleep
  • Gym destroyer – DOOM, Devil May Cry, and Metal Gear Rising for when I need to lift heavy things

My crowning achievement: Got my 61-year-old dad hooked on the Red Dead Redemption 2 soundtrack. He’s a lifelong country western fan and had NO IDEA game music could be that good. Now he asks me for “more of that cowboy game music” whenever I visit. Mission accomplished!

Places to AVOID (unless you want viruses)

Seriously, as someone who once had to completely reformat after downloading from a sketchy soundtrack site, PLEASE avoid these types of places:

  • Random MP3 download sites with names like “FREEGAMEMUSIC4U.co.biz.ru”
  • Anything that makes you complete multiple surveys
  • Sites that have an excessive number of download buttons (which one is real???)
  • Places that make you install a “special downloader”

NOT WORTH IT. My laptop died for your sins. Learn from my mistakes.

My personal top 5 game soundtracks of all time

Totally subjective, will fight anyone who disagrees (jk… maybe):

  1. Chrono Trigger – Yasunori Mitsuda literally hospitalized himself making this perfect soundtrack
  2. Nier: Automata – I have cried real tears to “Weight of the World.” No shame.
  3. Hollow Knight – Christopher Larkin deserves every award ever for this atmospheric masterpiece
  4. Persona 5 – It’s been 7 years and I still can’t get “Beneath the Mask” out of my head
  5. Journey – Austin Wintory’s Grammy-nominated miracle

Honorable mentions: Bastion, Hades, Final Fantasy VI, Undertale, and literally anything Nobuo Uematsu has ever touched.

One last story…

Back in 2018, I was going through a really rough breakup and couldn’t sleep for weeks. I ended up playing Journey for the first time, and that soundtrack… I can’t even explain what it did to me. I just sat there after finishing the game at like 3 AM, staring at the credits with tears streaming down my face.

Immediately bought the soundtrack and listened to it on repeat for months. It genuinely helped me process everything I was feeling. Game music isn’t just entertainment – sometimes it’s therapy.

So yeah, maybe I’m a bit obsessive about collecting these soundtracks, but they’ve been there for me in ways regular music sometimes hasn’t. There’s something special about melodies that are designed to make you feel like the hero of your own story, ya know?

Anyway, hope this helps your collection grow! If you know any great sources I missed, hit me up. Always looking to expand the library!

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