Yesterday evening, Nintendo Music was released to the world. A music streaming app featuring songs from a plethora of beloved titles, the app promised to be Spotify for the company and their franchises, and a nice convenient option to unofficial YouTube uploads and file sharing sites.

But now the dust has settled, how well does it achieve this task? Is Nintendo Music worth getting? And what things should the service improve that aren’t there already?

Well on a basic level, it works exactly as you’d hope it would. You can listen to any song you like from any Nintendo game featured on the service, and loop or extend them to your heart’s content. You can add them to favourites, or create playlists about whatever theme you desire, letting you listen to only Luigi songs or only Meta Knight songs to your heart’s content.

And with the app not requiring an internet connection to use, and playlists being easy to share with people using the app/online, it’s clear that Nintendo has succeeded in creating a Spotify like platform here. It’s functionally everything you’d want from a Nintendo Music app, and it works well really in that regard.

However, the quality of a music app’s features isn’t really the most important thing in the world here. It’s certainly important on a baseline level, and does indeed provide a basic standard to live up to…

But it’s the song selection that really matters. If a music app doesn’t have much amazing music on it, the best UI or UX in the world won’t matter one jot. Spotify with 50 artists is never going to compete with the actual Spotify, no matter how shiny the app or website is or how many new features it packs in under the hood.

Which is why Nintendo Music is tough to rate at the moment. On the one hand, the songs included are exceptional choices. You’ve got the Super Mario Galaxy soundtrack, which is one of the most critically acclaimed video game soundtracks of all time. Donkey Kong Country is present, which had one of the best soundtracks of the SNES era. Ocarina of Time and Breath of the Wild are there, as are Metroid Prime, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

So, game wise, they’re all heavy hitters. There’s nothing mediocre here at all, and we’re sure every Nintendo fan will find something to listen to on this service.

And the quality of the soundtracks here is great too. It’d be all too easy for the song selection to be of the limited kind, with only major level and boss themes present and most extra jingles and regional variations conspicuously absent.

But that’s not the case. No, every possible song in the games featured is present and accounted for. The jingles when you solve a puzzle in a Zelda game? They’re all here. The variations played when you go underwater or through a thunder cloud or through another particular area in a Mario Kart 8 Deluxe track? All present, and possible to listen to independently of the main track theme.

Heck, you’ve even got some song choices that you’d never expect in a million years. The NES and Famicom versions of Metroid are listed separately, since each version had a different soundchip and hence slightly different versions of the same songs. And for the 4 people in the world who find it amusing, the sound effects played when Bolson and his workmen build Link’s house are there as a ‘song’ too. So, if you enjoy listening to workmen trying to build a weapon stand for 20 seconds, knock yourself out!

Oh, and yeah trailer themes are there too. So not only is the Nintendo Switch Presentation theme for Breath of the Wild available on the service, but so’s the one for the E3 trailer as well. Nintendo really pulled out all the stops here, and it really helps make the app a delight to use.

The trailer themes for games are here too

Unfortunately, that same Nintendo is also why we’re a bit worried here. You see, Nintendo’s track record with releasing things on digital services is… not amazing. Switch Online may be a great system, but its selection of classic games is still very limited to this day, with even well-known internally developed classics being added at a snail’s pace.

Hence there’s always the worry that lessons might not have been learned here. That the 20 or so soundtracks we got will only be expanded by 3 or 4 games every week or two, and that the vast majority of Nintendo music will remain absent for the foreseeable future.

So, we really have to hope that’s not the case. That all those games Nintendo showed as ‘coming’ soon are week 1 additions, and that the library increases by 10 or 20 games a week, not by 2 or 3 games a month.

We’re also not a fan of how artists are credited on the service either. Because to put it bluntly…

They’re not. They’re not credited at all.

As a result, if you look up the copyright info for a song, you’ll just see the names of the companies involved in developing and publishing the game instead. No David Wise or Koji Kondo, no Toby Fox or Yoko Shimomura. Just “copyright Nintendo”, and that’s it.

Sadly, composers aren’t credited in the app

That feels a bit sleazy if you ask us. You’re just erasing the names of the musical geniuses that brought your games to life? Really?

There’s also the question of whether a new app was needed for this or whether the songs should have been put on services like Spotify, but hey, it’s Nintendo we’re talking about. Nintendo hates losing control of their own work, especially to third party platforms with their own rules and restrictions. So, this was likely the best solution all around, and the one both fans and Nintendo Legal can somehow see eye to eye on.

Still, that’s Nintendo Music. As an app it’s well designed and has all the features you need, and the music selection is excellent so far…

But we have to remain cautious about it in future due to Nintendo’s notorious update schedules, and the limited selection present at the moment.

Check it out if you’re interested in Nintendo music, but be aware that future updates might not be as common as you’d hope they’d be.

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