{"id":826546,"date":"2025-02-12T14:13:38","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T20:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/12\/nintendo-music-is-my-favorite-app-for-background-music\/"},"modified":"2025-02-12T14:13:38","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T20:13:38","slug":"nintendo-music-is-my-favorite-app-for-background-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/12\/nintendo-music-is-my-favorite-app-for-background-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Nintendo Music Is My Favorite App for Background Music"},"content":{"rendered":"
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RIP, Nintendo channels on YouTube.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\"nintendo<\/p>\n

Credit: Nintendo of America\/YouTube<\/span>\n <\/p>\n

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If you want to listen to a soundtrack from a movie or TV show, you can usually find it on a licensed streaming service, if not buy the songs outright. Sadly, that’s not typically the case with video-game music. Most game soundtracks are not publicly available, which is why YouTube is the #1 source for listening to tracks from your favorite games.<\/p>\n

In particular, Nintendo hates<\/em> when third parties upload any of their content to YouTube, whether that’s game footage or music. Over the years<\/a>, the company has gone after creators who upload their copyrighted music to the platform, even though Nintendo itself has offered few viable outlets for fans to find that music legally. Until late last year, anyway.<\/p>\n

Nintendo Music is the answer<\/h2>\n

At the end of October 2024, Nintendo announced a new music streaming service, called, appropriately, “Nintendo Music<\/a>.” Nintendo Music is an app for your smartphone, and it resembles other music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, only rather than find music from Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, and The Beatles, it houses music from Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. <\/p>\n

While you can find plenty of specific game soundtracks to listen to, there are some fun and unique options as well. Like other streaming services, Nintendo Music offers playlists based on different moods, themes, or even characters. There are playlists for songs inspired by Bowser or Peach, for example, as well as roundups of songs from boss battles, moments where you win the game, as well as when you start a new adventure. <\/p>\n

The “Powering Up” playlist, for instance, has “Hyrule Field Main Theme” from Ocarina of Time<\/em>, “Mario Kart 8 Title Screen” from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe<\/em>, and “Tera Raid Battle” from Pok\u00e9mon Scarlet and Pok\u00e9mon Violet<\/em>. Not bad.<\/p>\n

How Nintendo Music works<\/h2>\n

The app is free to download on iOS<\/a> and Android<\/a>, but you do need to be subscribed to Nintendo Switch<\/a> Online. (Any of the plans will do.) After downloading the app, I just needed to sign into my account, choose whether or not to enable notification (never enable notifications), tap through a pop-up warning me that some songs may be spoilers for games I haven’t beaten yet, and I was in.<\/p>\n

As far as streaming apps go, it’s pretty straightforward: You choose a song or playlist, and it plays, complete with a still from its game. One neat feature is you can tap an “Extend to” button on certain songs to have a song play for 15, 30, or even 60 minutes. (But when are you going to add a 10-hour option<\/a>, Nintendo?) You have basic playback controls, the option to repeat or shuffle, and the option to reorder a playlist.<\/p>\n

If you tap the (\u2022\u2022\u2022) menu on any given song, you can choose to add it to your favorites, download the song for offline playback, add the song to another playlist, add the song next on your queue, add the song last on your queue, see more tracks from the game the song is from, share the song with others, or see the credits for the track itself.<\/p>\n

A growing library (with some oversights)<\/h2>\n

As a huge fan of Nintendo music, the music, I’m mostly feeling positive about Nintendo Music, the app. This experience is long overdue, and the selection of tracks is relatively varied, especially now that it has been up and running for a few months. There are songs from many different Nintendo brands and eras, including new Pok\u00e9mon<\/em>, old Donkey Kong<\/em>, even Nintendogs<\/em>. <\/p>\n

This isn’t something Nintendo launched and immediately abandoned, either: The company has been adding new game soundtracks each month since the app’s release:<\/p>\n