Nintendo finally gets into music streaming with Nintendo Music
After multiple pleas from fans over the years, Nintendo finally has their music available for streaming, but it’s not in the way anyone expected or probably wanted.
Announced today, Nintendo Music is a music streaming service allowing listeners to dive into the soundtracks of their favorite Nintendo games on mobile phones. While it’s identical to other streaming services, Nintendo Music offers a bit more for listeners. The platform has a special spoiler prevention feature allowing listeners to filter out soundtracks for games they haven’t played yet. While every service comes with a simple repeat button, Nintendo Music furthers things by letting listeners loop the track they’re playing for up to an hour.
Nintendo Music is only available for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. An announcement trailer can be seen here. More information about the service can be found here.
Unfortunately, the service’s launch features a small amount of available game soundtracks. As of this writing, only 23 soundtracks are present, including Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, nintendogs, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. With a plethora of potential soundtracks to be added, fans are already bummed about their favorite titles not being available just yet. Many fear new soundtracks will hit the service at the same rate as titles being added to Nintendo Switch Online, which can take months.
There’s also the issue of composers not being credited with their music in the app. In recent years, streaming services have added a section where writers and producers for music are openly credited. We’re not sure if Nintendo will rectify that in the future.
Obviously, the major complaint is Nintendo making its own music app instead of simply putting its soundtracks on streaming services. While Nintendo Switch Online has around 30 million subscribers, Spotify dominates the field with 626 million users worldwide while Apple Music is estimated to have around 90 million users worldwide. Over the years, numerous game studios have thrown music on streaming services as well as offered special physical releases. Overall, Nintendo Music feels like a "one step forward, two steps back" situation for the popular video game company.