Nintendo Releases App For Game Music And The Reactions Are Priceless
from the all-that-for-this? dept
For half a decade now, we have followed along with the war that Nintendo decided to wage on its own fans’ celebration of what is admittedly great music coming from Nintendo games. Starting in 2019, Nintendo has continuously ramped up its war efforts, particularly against YouTubers and their accounts. It started with the takedowns of a few hundred videos, before that exploded into the thousands. Both those YouTubers and fans alike have pointed out throughout all of this that much of this music remained entirely unavailable to fans through any sort of legit means.
That led to some speculation over the past few years that Nintendo was planning to release this music through some official means and was clearing the way for that release. Well, it turns out that speculation was somewhat true, with Nintendo recently announcing its Nintendo Music mobile app. Here’s the announcement video from, ironically, YouTube.
Now, some outlets, and even some fan feedback, have had some positive things to say about the app. Much of that positivity is geared towards the slick, minimalist nature of the UX. You know, the exact thing that Nintendo is quite famously good at pulling off.
But much of the other reaction is roughly what I’ve been saying about this for years. The music catalogue is a fraction of what was available via YouTube. Much of the rest of the video game industry has already released its music via streaming services like Spotify, or else they have just let the YouTube videos be, noting that they serve as a multiplying force for bringing and keeping fans of their games top of mind.
In other words, Nintendo didn’t have to build its own dedicated app for fans to enjoy its music. There are professional platforms out there already that know precisely how to do that and have tons of subscribers already. All Nintendo had to do was relinquish a modicum of control over its IP.
Look, I love video game music. I’ve been writing here about it for years and listening to it for longer than that. That Nintendo decided to build a legit method for streaming some of its excellent video game music is a good thing in and of itself.
But street-sweeping away music content from YouTube and other places in order to do so is a huge miss.
Filed Under: culture, music, video games
Companies: nintendo
Comments on “Nintendo Releases App For Game Music And The Reactions Are Priceless”
The only company that hates their fans and customers more than Sony, is Nintendo.
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You have to give Sony some credit for installing root kits from music CDs and for inventing the SCMS bits that killed DAT and minidisc recording for good when MP3 came around, because good riddance.
"good" things about nintendo
Their “linux tablet” is/was fairly affordable. Though the boot steps are needlessly complex.
Nintendo is 20 years behind other videogame company’s in regard to it’s legal stance on
YouTube videos and switch 2 is on the way
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There is no such thing as “20 years behind” in those horrors from the past that are bound to repeat themselves.
I mean, is Trump ahead or behind on fascism?
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Neither. He’s on the far right, and therefore fully fascist.
Hmmm
How many other console manufacturers can still charge full price for a launch game 7 years after that launch?
None, that’s how many.
If Nintendo hate their customers it doesn’t seem to affect their bottom line.
Maybe Internet whingers make up a smaller proportion of the customer base than you think.
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All, that’s how many. They just don’t do so because they don’t sell that game themselves after that amount of time, and it is instead available on the second-hand market, if at all. A company having the ability to do a thing is not at all the same as a company actually doing that thing, you know.
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Whining about Nintendo on the internet is the only topic Tim knows how to write. He constantly has to twist his rhetoric into knots trying to find something negative to say.
Good, actually
Okay, real quick
* I like the interface, sorting between game series, characters, and even moods/vibes
* The music plays with other apps in use or the screen off. My 9 year old likes falling asleep to Nintendo music and Youtube is TERRIBLE for ads that are inappropriate for 9 year olds to fall asleep to
* I can download the songs for offline listening, saving data
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official client L
…again, official youtube client L
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You do know that food suppliers are still charging high prices on the basis of the now-ended cost of living crisis, right? Meaning not everybody has the money to pay for YouTube Premium. Now fuck off with your non-solution.
Re: Re: Re: territorial
And there are a bunch of us who live in territories where YouTube Premium (& memberships for that matter) are simply unavailable. No idea why since we use British Pounds as our currency.
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What does “client L” refer to? Is that an abbreviation? A web search isn’t revealing anything relevant.
I’ve had good luck with the unofficial clients, notably yt-dlp.
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If you’re on Android, a third-party app for viewing YouTube videos could do the same things. I’m using NewPipe.
Nintendo learned all they needed to know about protection and intimidation when they worked for/with the Japanese mafia.
Seems clear
that Nintendo only does this sort of thing so they have some plausible showing that they offer old games (and now old music) in some form and are insulating themselves from any sort of crying that there’s no “legal” way to access this stuff.
Of course, there still isn’t a legal way for 90% of it, but it doesn’t really matter when it comes to legal threats.
AND NOW
For movies/other video games, created in the last 20 years.
so frustrating
I love Nintendo’s music but the fact that they’ve been takedown happy on YouTube is so frustrating. Why couldn’t they just allow fan uploads and give us the full catalog?
super mario 64