The Music Album in ARC Raiders is a rare trinket-class item tagged as both Residential and Commercial loot. It can’t be crafted, stacks up to three, weighs 0.3kg, and sells for 3,000 coins. During the Cold Snap update, demand for it spikes because you need at least two copies to clear the final step of the seasonal Flickering Flames project.
There’s no fixed spawn for Music Albums; they drop from scavenging containers in Residential and Commercial zones. The key to farming them efficiently is to focus on a few very dense locations and to take advantage of conditions that boost rare loot.
How Music Albums work as an item
Music Album is a Rare trinket that drops from scavenging, not from enemies or vendors. It is described in-game as something you’d use to unwind after a day Topside, which reflects its Residential and Commercial loot tags. That tagging matters for routing: it means lockers, dressers, cabinets, suitcases, and office storage in those zone types are the only realistic places to find it.
Because it’s a trinket, it competes with a wide pool of other flavor items in those containers. The drop rate is low by design, and during Cold Snap a lot of players are chasing the same item, which makes dry streaks feel worse.
Best maps and locations to farm Music Albums
Music Albums can appear on any map, but a few locations stand out because they pack a high number of Residential or Commercial containers into a small area. Those are the spots worth looping when you’re specifically hunting this item.
Blue Gate: Village
The Village on The Blue Gate map is one of the strongest Residential farm locations in the game. It compresses a large number of multi-storey buildings into a relatively tight footprint. Each building usually contains several apartments, and each apartment has multiple searchable containers.
When sweeping the Village, focus on:
- Bedroom and hallway furniture such as dressers and smaller cabinets.
- Lockers in stairwells or storage rooms.
- Suitcases and bags that often sit near beds or in living rooms.
Because every container is a roll on the Residential loot table, you’re effectively maximizing attempts per minute here, which is ideal when chasing a rare trinket.
Spaceport: Departure and Arrival buildings
If you’d rather lean on Commercial zones, the Spaceport map is the most efficient option. Two points of interest stand out: the Departure Building and the Arrival Building.
Departure Building is a multi-floor office and terminal complex with corridors full of desks, cabinets, and lockers. It’s a pure Commercial environment, so you get an uninterrupted run of trinket-bearing containers.
Arrival Building mirrors Departure in layout and function. Offices, check-in counters, security corridors, and baggage areas all add more lockers and cabinets. Players frequently report finding multiple Music Albums here in a single short run, especially during Night Raids.
When you route either building, clear:
- Office clusters with long rows of desks and filing cabinets.
- Back-of-house security and staff rooms with metal lockers.
- Baggage or storage areas with stacked containers and luggage.
Be prepared for heavy ARC presence. Both buildings tend to attract tougher patrols, so coming in under Cold Snap or other high-threat conditions demands a solid combat loadout.
Buried City: Southern Residential and Commercial cluster
Buried City is widely used as a general trinket farm because much of its southern half is built from apartments, shops, and mixed-use blocks. For Music Albums, several locations in this zone are especially productive.
Grandiosa Apartments offer the straightforward “search a lot of flats quickly” loop. Every hallway branches into rooms packed with domestic furniture and storage, which means many Residential dice rolls per floor.
Plaza Rosa combines both Residential and Commercial containers. The standout here is the pharmacy. The upper floor is full of dressers and other searchable fixtures that behave like trinket containers even though the building’s theme is medical retail.
One easy-to-miss spot in Buried City is the Hospital second floor. Even though the location is tagged as Medical, a room on the northern end of the floor contains a thick cluster of lockers that frequently spit out trinkets. It’s worth including this room in a wider Buried City loop when you’re already in the area.
Dam Battlegrounds: Ruby Residence
On Dam Battlegrounds, Ruby Residence is the one Residential location worth targeting specifically for Music Albums. It’s a compact complex with multiple loot containers jammed into stairwells, apartments, and shared spaces.
The key at Ruby Residence is thoroughness. Work floor by floor and open every container that fits the Residential profile. Because the building is small, it’s fast to reset and re-clear when you’re chasing a couple of Albums for Flickering Flames.
How conditions and modes affect Music Album drops
Two levers make Music Album farming significantly less painful: map conditions that raise rare drop chances and modes that increase container density within a short timeframe.
Use Cold Snap and Night Raids to boost rarity
Cold Snap is a seasonal map condition introduced alongside the Flickering Flames content. When Cold Snap is active on a map, it increases luck for looting, which roughly translates into a higher chance of seeing Rare or better items in containers. Since Music Album is a Rare trinket, this directly improves your odds.
Night Raids function similarly in practice. Players report that Night Raids on Spaceport’s Arrival Building, in particular, can produce several Music Albums within minutes. The combination of dense Commercial containers and a condition that favors higher rarity rolls is very strong.
Tip: When you open the deployment UI, prioritize maps that show Cold Snap active. If you have the option, queue for Night Raids on Spaceport or Buried City to stack the benefits.
Practical run setups for efficient farming
Once you know where to look, the next step is optimizing how you run those areas so that Music Albums you find actually make it home.
Protect Albums with your Safe Pocket
Music Albums are lost if you die and fail to extract, like most loot. To avoid losing them at the last minute, put them into your Safe Pocket as soon as you pick them up. The Safe Pocket preserves its contents even if your run goes bad.
Step 1: Equip an Augment that grants access to a Safe Pocket slot before deploying. Without it, you have no secure storage for high-value trinkets.
Step 2: As soon as a Music Album drops, open your inventory and move it into the Safe Pocket. Do not wait until the end of the raid.
Step 3: Once you have the two Albums needed for Flickering Flames, consider heading straight for extraction instead of risking more combat.
Suggested farm loops
Different maps suit different moods and squad strengths. Here are simple, repeatable loops that focus on Music Album containers and then get you out.
Loop 1: Spaceport Arrival/Departure focus
Step 1: Deploy to Spaceport with Cold Snap active if possible; select Night Raid when available.
Step 2: Sprint straight to the Arrival Building, enter through a main access point, and begin a floor-by-floor sweep of offices, baggage areas, and staff rooms, opening every locker and cabinet.
Step 3: Once you’ve cleared Arrival, cross to the Departure Building and repeat the sweep, again prioritizing desks, filing cabinets, and lockers.
Step 4: The moment you secure two Music Albums in your Safe Pocket, peel off toward the nearest extraction to bank them.
Loop 2: Blue Gate Village sweep
Step 1: Deploy to The Blue Gate and route directly to the Village.
Step 2: Pick one edge of the Village and work building by building, clearing all apartments vertically (for example, always finish a building’s floors before moving to the next).
Step 3: Focus on bedsides, wardrobes, hallway cabinets, and any suitcases you spot. Skip open, empty-feeling rooms to save time once you know the layout.
Step 4: After a full circuit of the Village, either extract with whatever you found or reset the run and repeat if you still need Albums.
Loop 3: Buried City southern band
Step 1: Deploy to Buried City and move to the southern Residential and Commercial strip.
Step 2: Clear Grandiosa Apartments, hitting every apartment on two or three floors before moving on.
Step 3: Push to Plaza Rosa, loot the pharmacy’s upper floor with its dense dressers, then swing through nearby shops and apartments that share the same block.
Step 4: If time and threat allow, detour through the Hospital’s second floor and clear the northern locker room before extracting.
Why drops can feel “bugged” right now
Many players report running Residential and Commercial zones for a dozen or more raids without seeing a single Music Album, then suddenly finding several in one building. That pattern doesn’t necessarily indicate a broken drop table; it’s what a low probability item looks like when paired with human perception.
Cold Snap also changed player behavior. Music Albums went from being flavor loot to a project requirement overnight, so players who used to ignore them now notice every dry run. At peak times, more squads also converge on the same high-yield buildings, which means you sometimes arrive to already-looted containers and come away convinced nothing drops there anymore.
The practical answer is to narrow your routing, lean on Arrival and Departure at Spaceport, the Village on Blue Gate, and the southern Buried City cluster, and always favor Cold Snap or Night Raid conditions when you can. With that setup, getting the two Music Albums needed for Flickering Flames becomes a manageable short-term grind instead of a marathon of random chance.
