Last night, Nintendo made a surprise launch of a new Nintendo Music smartphone app, offering many of the company's staple soundtracks as a benefit to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. But the new subscription freebie could give Nintendo additional motivation to crack down once again on internet users who have been collecting and posting Nintendo music online for years.
The Nintendo Music app includes hundreds of songs, from downloadable and streaming titles, from 1985 to Super Mario Bros. to last year Pikmin 4. The current music selection is far from complete, but at least it touches on many of Nintendo's most popular series, including zelda, Pokémon, Kirby, fire emblem, metroidand animal crossing (plus popular background music from various Wii channels). Nintendo promises that more tracks will be “added over time,” mirroring the process Nintendo has used to add to its classic Nintendo Switch Online game downloads.
A new trailer introduces some of the features of the Nintendo Music app.
Nintendo Music users can create their own playlists, of course, or choose from several preset playlists to suit different moods or character themes. The app also syncs with your Nintendo Account to highlight music from the games you play and offers options to avoid “spoilers” for certain game music or extend songs into long loops.
The sad fate of GilvaSunner
The launch of the Nintendo Music app follows a history of some pretty strict DMCA-driven takedowns of Nintendo music uploaded to the Internet by others. In 2019, for example, Nintendo issued dozens of copyright strikes for songs from the Nintendo soundtrack posted on the popular YouTube channel GilvaSunner, sparking a backlash from fans. By 2022, Nintendo continued to remove thousands of additional tracks uploaded by GilvaSunner, leading them to conclude that “at this point, it's really not worth keeping the channel up any longer.”
While GilvaSunner didn't make any money from the ad-free YouTube channel, some observers have noted in the past that “Nintendo doesn't make any money from its soundtracks either, because there's no official way to pay to listen to them.” to them.” That's no longer strictly true, as the Nintendo Music app is sold as a perk to make a paid subscription to Nintendo Switch Online a little more attractive.