A lot of rumors and speculation were going around big Nintendo announcements coming this month. So far, we got Alarmo and Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition. But Nintendo did have one more October surprise left.
And that surprise is Nintendo Music, Nintendo’s own music streaming app where you can play songs, themes, and audio owned by Nintendo.
As explained on Nintendo’s website, you will need a Nintendo Switch Online membership to login and use the app. But Nintendo is being very generous with that provision, at least during this pilot period.
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So, you can get Nintendo Music if you are only on a 7-day free trial. You can also use the Nintendo Switch Online Family Membership to share them with seven other Nintendo Account holders.
In fact, you don’t even need to be using a Nintendo Switch system or have your account logged onto a Switch to use Nintendo Music. You just need to have a Nintendo account and a Switch Online subscription
Nintendo Music is a mobile app, supported on devices running iOS 16, or Android OS 9 or higher. Of course, Android runs on an insane number of devices, so even with this proviso, Nintendo does not guarantee that it will run on your device, such as a Galaxy Watch 7. Nintendo also clarifies it does not support devices with 2 GB RAM or less.
We can see that the app is in its early phase, as they admit that it does not have a sound balancing feature, AKA some tracks will sound louder than others. You will get to choose between three audio qualities; Data Saving (64 KBPS), Balanced (192 KBPS) and High Quality (320 KBPS). You can download songs for offline playback as well.
Nintendo also shared a list of supported regions, with a promise that more regions will be added in the future. You can check if you may be fortunate enough to try it this early here.
At long last, Nintendo has come across a solution to share their music with Nintendo fans. They did have some limitations on how they could share that music, because they don’t have all the rights to the music.
For this reason, for example, they could only release the CD for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS & Wii U soundtrack via Club Nintendo. They couldn’t afford to license all these songs for sale, but as a giveaway, they could get around that restriction.
But the flip side to this is this is an opportunity for Nintendo to license songs made by outside composers, such as veteran Donkey Kong composer Grant Kirkhope. They would be able to provide him and other such composers royalties, and they could do so with less severe splits than if it had to go through Spotify or other streaming services.
And Nintendo could also license music by other game companies to come to their app, with terms more favorable than what Spotify could offer. There’s a lot more we could say but for now, our hopes are high that this app becomes a success, and that they could expand it further.
