Nintendo Makes Its Music Available Through a New App
If you want to listen to soundtracks from movies or TV shows, you can usually find them on streaming or buy the songs directly. This isn’t usually the case with video game music: Most game soundtracks aren’t publicly available, making YouTube the #1 source for listening to tracks from your favorite games.
Nintendo hates it when third parties upload any content to YouTube, be it game footage or music. For years, the company has targeted creators who uploaded their copyrighted music to the platform, even though Nintendo itself has offered fans few realistic options to find that music legally.
Nintendo music is here
This is officially changing. On Wednesday, Nintendo announced a new music streaming service, appropriately named ” Nintendo Music .” Nintendo Music is an app for your smartphone that’s reminiscent of other music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. Only instead of the music of Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny and The Beatles, you have the music of Mario, Zelda and Metroid.
While you can find specific game soundtracks to listen to, there are some fun and unique options here as well. Like other streaming services, Nintendo Music offers playlists based on different moods, themes, or even characters. There are playlists for songs inspired by Bowser or Peach, for example, as well as selections of songs from boss battles, moments when you win a game, and when you start a new adventure. For example, the “Powering Up” playlist features “Hyrule Field Main Theme” from Ocarina of Time , “Mario Kart 8 Title Screen” from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe , and “Tera Raid Battle” from Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet . Not bad.
How Nintendo Music works
The app is free to download on iOS and Android , but you need a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. (Either plan would do.) After downloading the app, I simply had to log into my account, choose whether to turn on notifications (never turn on notifications), click on the pop-up warning me that some songs might be spoilers. for games I haven’t beaten yet, and I’ve been to.
As far as streaming apps go, it’s pretty simple: you select a song or playlist and it plays along with footage from the game. One cool feature: you can click the “Extend to” button to have the song play for 15, 30, or even 60 minutes. (But when are you going to add a 10-hour option , Nintendo?) You have basic playback controls, the ability to repeat or shuffle, and the ability to reorder your playlist. If you press the menu (•••) on any song, you can add it to favorites, download a song for offline playback, add a song to another playlist, add a song next in queue, add a song last in queue, browse more tracks from the game , from which the song is taken, share the song with others, or see the credits for the track itself.
As a big fan of Nintendo music, I have a generally positive view of Nintendo Music. This experience is long overdue, and the initial selection of tracks is relatively diverse. There are songs from different brands and eras of Nintendo, including new Pokémon , old Donkey Kong , and even Nintendogs . However, I have a soft spot for YouTube playlists that I’ve been using as background music for years: these creators didn’t own the rights to these tracks, but they took the time to create playlists of their favorite Nintendo tunes for others to enjoy . Additionally, at the time these tracks barely existed outside of the games they came from.
While the future of these creators may be more in jeopardy than ever, Nintendo Music hasn’t replaced one particularly important subgenre on YouTube: Nintendo lofi. While you can listen to plenty of Nintendo originals on the company’s new app, you can still turn to creators like GameChops for lofi remixes of iconic tracks. I’m very partial to ” Zelda & Chill ” playlists myself, but ” Chilltendo Deluxe ” offers a good mix of various Nintendo tunes in the form of lofi beats.
However, one interesting benefit of the official app is that Nintendo takes spoilers seriously . If you’re worried about song titles ruining the storylines of games you haven’t played or haven’t finished, you can go to Settings, click Spoiler Prevention, and add games you want to hide music from.
What is Nintendo doing?
Nintendo news has been a little strange lately. While there have been rumors of a successor to the Nintendo Switch (lovingly referred to as the Nintendo Switch 2), the company has resolutely not made any significant announcements on the matter. Instead, they announced Nintendo Music, and shortly before that, unrelated hardware: a $100 alarm clock called Alarmo .
Nintendo Switch 2 looks like it’s coming soon, but in the meantime, Nintendo is doing everything but hinting at it. Until a new console arrives, I think we can happily wake up and spend our days listening to Nintendo music.