Nintendo has commented on making their music available for streaming and purchase on digital stores.
Nintendo is famous for its officially created video game music, with composers like Hip Tanaka and Koji Kondo recognized as some of the industry’s greatest legends. There is a general feel of how Nintendo makes music, even outside of Mario, that makes their signature sound unmistakable.
However, it’s also well known that Nintendo music is very hard to come by. We hardly ever get soundtracks get released by the company, and even when it happens, the music that’s available is hardly ever complete or definitive, even for a single game.
How bad is the situation? Every piece of background music used for the 3DS, Wii, and Wii U UIs are unavailable to buy in any way. While it may seem odd, the easiest way to get access to Nintendo music, as well as from other video games, is to purchase the latest version of Super Smash Bros. Sakurai always makes it a point to add a fully featured music player with every new game, so that fans can enjoy the music they spent to license, as well as they would want.
Nintendo just published their latest Q&A with investors, with official translations so that both the meaning of the investors’ asking questions, and Nintendo’s answers, are clearly understood. Nintendo’s own president, Shuntaro Furukawa, addressed the question of rereleasing their music from an investor:
“Many people have an attachment to game music, and we receive a lot of attention when we hold and stream concerts featuring our game music. I feel that people love games from a variety of different perspectives.
I believe game music is extremely valuable for expanding the number of people who have access to Nintendo IP, and would like to consider utilizing it in ways that bring joy to consumers.”
As Furukawa has pointed out, Nintendo does make a point to commission full concerts for the music in their games, and those concerts are actually easily available to fans for free. For example, The Legend of Zelda orchestra concert, and the concerts for each Splatoon title, are all free to view on YouTube, uploaded by Nintendo themselves.
But what this investor is talking about is making their music available in whatever platform that they can get it. That can include getting listed on online stores like iTunes Store, Amazon MP3, or even a platform like Bandcamp.
But the big audiences have transitioned to streaming, and Nintendo would meet the goal of reaching out to as many fans as possible by going onto Spotify, and to a lesser degree, Apple Music and YouTube Music. Square Enix seems to be leading the industry on how to monetize their official soundtracks. It’s time that Nintendo followed their lead.
