What do you need to know about CSGO Music Kits?

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csgo music kits

According to another popular game played from the first-person perspective, silence is the music of life, but that doesn’t mean that everyone should keep quiet and bathe in sonic nothingness. Back in the days of CS 1.6 the game didn’t have much soundtrack to it, but the more the additional UI and functionalities developed, the more additional tracks that made it more pleasant to play and browse the game appeared in the game. Two years after the game’s debut, CSGO players, especially the more frequent ones, could be a little nauseated by the catchy, yet quite pompous main menu theme, playing all the time while you wait for the match. 

CSGO Music Kits are special kinds of droppable and buyable items in CSGO that allow you to freshen up the soundtrack to your online skirmishes. Valve introduced them to the game during an October 2014 update and they stayed for good. Now there are 39 different sets with different music styles. You can easily equip them in the equipment menu, just like you do with the rest of your loadout. CSGO Music Kits basically change the background music and jingles playing in the lobby, during a match, and during specific events. Additionally, the MVP jingle from the Music Kit you’re using is played to everyone in a match if you are the MVP of the given round, even if you’re not sharing the kit with them.

How can you use CSGO Music Kits?

To use a specific music kit, you need to obtain it first. Otherwise, only the default one will be available. After that, the new ones will be visible on the equipment page. There you can equip it like you would any other item. This will cause game music and jingles to switch to the ones from the kit.

The exact types of music bits within such a kit are:

  • Main menu
  • Round start
  • Round end
  • Bomb Planted or Hostage Taken
  • Bomb warning
  • Won round
  • Lost round
  • Round end warning
  • Death camera
  • MVP

The main menu theme will also play at the end of the match. Bomb warning is the last ten seconds that in the usual set is represented by the accelerating beeping of the bomb. It is often counterparted with a dynamically escalating music. 

What are the best CSGO Music Kits?

Below you’ll read a brief analysis of what our team considers to be the best music kits CSGO drops will provide you with.

Austin Wintory – Desert Fire

This kit has been composed and prepared by a famous and awarded soundtrack composer. It takes a surprisingly warm approach to the dynamic music accompanying CSGO matches. It mixes a dynamic production of an action movie soundtrack and blends it with Spanish, tango-like motives filled with acoustic guitar trills. Large orchestral drums and flute melodies add a real Tom Clancy-esque dramatism to your defeats. You can acquire this kit for around $3.20 in the regular version and for around $5.50 in the StatTrak version.

dren – Deaths Head Demolition

Also very much in the realm of motion picture soundtrack, dren goes for epic drum rumbles and woodwind orchestras playing ominous chords, but with a more synthetic and cold approach, fitting in a distorted guitar here and there. Round-start jingles are electrifying and push you onwards. Death’s Head Demolition costs around $3.15 on the Steam Community Market. A StatTrak version is more-or-less 50% more expensive.

Noisia – Sharpened

A treat for punchy, bigger-than-life electronic music. This kit is filled with loud saw-wave bass drops, syncopated percussions, and strong pads. It’s also very consistent in terms of composition. It’s not as distracting as some of the more flowery music kits. You can get it for $3.18 in its regular form. The StatTrak Sharpened Music Kit oscillates between $5.40 and $5.50

Feed Me – High Noon

That’s a mixture one wouldn’t suspect would work so well. High Noon is a blend of Wild West twang guitars and big beat electronica recalling the UK shoreline. Feed Me is not afraid to go into pastiche and sometimes substitutes the Tex-Mex strings and gritty bass guitars with a synthesized guitar tone. On the other hand, the sub-bass that hits you during a death cam is menacing. This works best on more sunnier maps like Mirage or Inferno. Regular High Noon kit costs around $3.20, but the StatTrak version is less common; you can buy it for around $5.40.

Daniel Sadowski – The 8-bit Kit

Blast from the past – Sadowski launches his retro, 8-bit digital instruments and drills your ears with saturated chiptunes reminiscent of early Amiga games and alike. It plays both on nostalgia and a bit of a comedic effect, so you’ll probably enjoy it ironically. Whether that or just being a retro fan, you can acquire this for just over $3, unless you want it to be a StatTrak, where it can be bought for anything between $5 and $5.50.

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What are StatTrak Music Kits?

Unlike weapons with StatTrak, Music Kits count the number of times you got the MVP status at the end of the round, not your frags. This goes along playing the MVP jingle from your Music Kit to everyone in the match. It’s another neat way to show off a bit in the CSGO world. StatTrak Music Kits are rarer drops than the regular ones, and usually cost one and half the price of regular ones, meaning that, as shown on the examples of CSGO best music kits, they cost between $5 and $5.50. These prices are quite stable and unless there’s a big update of new ones with some new features, they will be that way for now.

CSGO Music Kit Trivia

The music kits available in Counter-Strike cover a very wide scope. The artists that provided music for the kits represent all kind of genres and niches – from very popular to more related to the CSGO scene itself.

On one hand, we have renowned score composers like the duo of Tree Adams and Ben Bromfield, or the electronica visionnaire Amon Tobin. On the other, there are kits from popular music entertainers like Darude or AWOLNATION. You can also find soundtracks from other games imported into CS:GO and formatted into short prompts. This include Halo, Hotline Miami or Talos Principle.

What comes as a nice surprise, the recent update also sees some music input from 3kliksphilip, a popular Youtube content creator dealing with all things CS:GO. His kit is called “Heading For The Source“. Does he know something we don’t? Remains to be seen.

Is any CSGO Music Kit worth it?

It’s all about whether you’re an aesthetic person or not. I imagine that people who don’t really care for music will not care for the title screen tunes either. Nevertheless, just like elevator music that’s too repetitive or a mundane waiting signal during a phone call, even such an ecstatic track like CSGO main theme can become dull. Not all CSGO Music Kits can fill the void, because some of them just repeat the pattern. However, there is a variety of genres within the collection. You can surely find something for yourself if you’d like to hear something different for a change.

Can you use your music in CSGO?

Aside from CSGO Music Kits, there are other methods of introducing custom music into Counter-Strike matches. There are numerous tools developed that help you stream music within the game. For example, this article at CSGOPEDIA shows you how to use Source Live Audio Mixer for Windows and Loopback for Mac to do so. It allows you to listen to the tracks you’ve chosen or stream them in the game for other players. Of course, it must be done in moderation not to distract players. Also, it has the disadvantage of using extra system resources as opposed to implemented music kits.

Summary

This brief article allowed readers to learn what are these music kits CSGO offers. Now you know how they work, what music they replace and what are the best CSGO Music Kits currently available on the market. Sometimes it’s difficult to discuss aesthetics, but hopefully now you have a good overview of what’s there to take or leave. Volume up and wish you some groovy frags!

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