Nintendo Music Launches On Mobile

This week’s out-of-nowhere Nintendo product was dropped this afternoon with only an hour’s advance warning. It’s a new mobile app, Nintendo Music, and it does what it sounds like: it plays nothing but music from Nintendo games.

At the moment the launch lineup consists of the soundtrack from 22 games, and includes music from the Splatoon, Zelda, Metroid, Mario, Pokémon, Donkey Kong, Star Fox, and Fire Emblem series, plus quite a few surprises. If you want the Wii Shop Channel music, it’s in there. And if what you’re craving ISN’T in there, Nintendo has promised to update the app on a regular basis with additional soundtracks.

Is there any requirement? Just one…you must be a paid Nintendo Switch Online member to use the app. So in a sense, it is a paid app even if you can download it for free.

This all sounds pretty great, but I have one immediate concern: is Nintendo going to use the existence of this app as an excuse to stomp any and all YouTube uploads of Nintendo game soundtracks? I hope not, but it would be in line with past behavior (and also, they’ve done it plenty of times already, app or no app). This company will often treat their fans well sometimes, but it will also treat them like garbage just as often.

Nintendo Music is downloadable now on iOS and Android. An NSO account is required.