Topic: Nintendo Music App

In their latest attempt to justify the base NSO subscription Nintendo has finally listened to the fans and created a music streaming service to unsuccessfully shut up the masses.

In all seriousness though, I think this is a good idea. Execution could be a bit better but I'm not entirely against this. Real question is what took them so long.

Discuss.

I'm still trying to process this. So long as the variety of games is good and they don't dripfeed soundtracks like they do NSO games, this is huge. I've imported CD soundtracks as well as listened to files on my MP3 player at work. I'm all in!

If anything, I'm just worried that this will give the ninjas the OK to shuriken any Nintendo music on YouTube, including remixes. If worst comes to worst, I guess I might still be able to listen to music from REALLY obscure Nintendo games that almost certainly won't be on the app, if ever, even when they bothered to include Wii Channel music.

My most wanted soundtracks right now would be Kid Icarus, Super Mario Land 1 and 2, DKC2 (confirmed) and DKC3, Mario 64 (surprised that's not already there), Paper Mario in general, Mario & Luigi in general, Luigi's Mansion, any WarioWare, Mario Galaxy 2, Splatoon 1 and 2, and Kirby and the Forgotten Land just to name several. There's so many.

In particular, I'll be so overjoyed when we can officially listen to the full Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze soundtrack. It's a shame that game never got a CD soundtrack or a full in-game music player. It absolutely deserved it!

Honestly, I'm surprised that people are spinning this as an anti-consumer move. Nintendo is finally doing something people wanted for ages, and just because it isn't on Spotify- people are calling them anti-consumer.

It makes sense why they aren't doing this through Spotify though. Nintendo stands to gain more by actually making their own streaming platform rather than putting it on a service that's going to take a massive cut of all profits earned.

I also think this gives people an actual reason to buy into NSO other than playing games online. Sure, you have a digital library of their old games, but I know a good few aren't really gripped by that alone. Nintendo also has Cloud Saves, but those aren't even used for the games that actually need them the most. The music though? That's one thing I can see adding value universally.

@Dev1024 I second the dkc tropical freeze idea. I've had that OST downloaded through less legal means for a while, but it should 1000 percent come to this app. One of the best video games OSTs ever.

@Dev1024 I think Super Paper Mario is the one I'd like to hear the most. The only version of the OST available is compressed to here and back.

That was the conclusion I came to as well, and given Spotify has been under controversy for how little they pay royalties, this approach might be better for the composers(or would be if they actually credited them).

Also, just realized this app has an extended playback feature for some songs. That is so cool! Man, this is just one of the wackiest and coolest Nintendo announcements ever.

This is pretty cool. I don’t think I will use it, but an app for specific game tracks is super, super cool.

@VoidofLight The claim people are making by saying that Nintendo is anti-consumer just because they didn’t put the songs on Spotify is dumb. I don’t even see them putting their songs on their own music streaming app instead of Spotify as that at all.

I do use Spotify, but I do see why Nintendo would not want to put their songs on there, of course, Spotify not paying royalties well and not compensating artists for their music, which actually has resulted in a few notable artists withdrawing tracks from there in the past. I honestly think that what Nintendo is doing with its own music streaming app is fine, given that some people on Spotify upload unofficial versions of songs that are there without properly crediting the artists, and the artists don’t get paid at all when people do that. Plus, Spotify is honestly becoming garbage now with all the constant ads and locking simple features behind a sub.

I love the part where people asked Nintendo to put music on Spotify, and then they do the most Nintendo thing ever and make their own Spotify.

I may or may not be sitting here listening to the Kirby's Dreamland Soundtrack on my phone. I'm also glad it supports downloads. I have a limited data plan, so it's useful for when I'm out. The only song I have on my phone is Jump Up Super Star, only because Nintendo released it as a single on iTunes years ago.

Edit: I just notice they have an extend to 15, 30, 60 minutes option.

I have several CDs that they released for Club Nintendo members with a lot of stars. I don't think that this app is bad per se, but knowing today's Nintendo, it seems more a way to control and stalk fans listening to music by other means, e.g. YouTube.

I also collected the various Club Nintendo CDs back in the day. So this is pretty cool. I just hope the catalogue of music grows quickly because these major releases had already fairly decent versions fairly readily accessible. It's the deep cuts where you look them up and it's some low quality ROM rip someone put on YouTube 14 years ago or something I want to see

Also how you could launch a music service for Nintendo and not have Donkey Kong Country 2, Super Mario World or Link's Awakening is baffling to me. This is very cool but there are so many huge gaps

You should be able to go onto this thing and find the menu theme from Gameboy Gallery, the wrestler song from Rhythm Heaven or the Sky level theme from Donkey Kong Land. Currently it doesn't have the Ballad of the Windfish, Midna's Lament or Stickerbrush Symphony. So room for improvement there

I will admit I got super excited for this and then I actually download it and of Nintendo's entire 40 years of gaming history, there's maybe 18 games here.

Oh Nintendo, never change. Well, I look forward to using this regularly when it has a decent amount of games in 3+ years.

@kkslider5552000 I kind of expected that to be honest, and I can't tell if it's funny or sad.

What would actually be funny is if they blindsided everyone with an actual strong consistent distribution of at least 12 tracks a month but that's wishful thinking

@N00BiSH To be fair, I was half expecting some of the games with larger soundtracks to have a decent chunk of songs missing and they aren't AFAIK (based on the very large amount of Mario Odyssey songs they seem to have).

@kkslider5552000 Yeah, I figured by Odyssey's track listing they'd be sticking to a number of tracks based on their JP-only CD releases(which seems to be the case with a game Splatoon 3) but I was actually surprised they included the Booster Pass music along with the base MK8DX soundtrack. Neat.

My only gripe is having to use separate apps for these tracks instead of being able to mix them into my usual music.

So I’ll likely continue buying physical soundtracks whenever possible, but this app will absolutely scratch that itch of listening to game music.

Hopefully they’ll all a lot of soundtracks at a good clip, and they won’t abandon it like they do with some many apps.

About games missing songs, the BotW soundtrack is about half the size of the full soundtrack. I know because I bought it recently.

Also is it just me or is there no way to shuffle your entire “library”? Only specific albums/playlists?

Any idea as to which regions it'll be released in?

It's a great app, but I probably won't get much use out of it until they put the Xenoblade soundtracks on there.

Loving the app so far and really wanted to reply here to give some appreciation to Nintendo's current tactic of not doing a Nintendo Direct and shadow dropping stuff like this on us lately! It's been a REALLY good week for me with all the Nintendo news. First the announcement of Xenoblade Chronicles X on Switch and now Nintendo Music. We're eating good this week as Nintendo fans!

Love the extended tracks and the app is clean and easy to navigate. A win for me. I don’t normally listen to music on my phone…now I do.