In Nintendo's ongoing mission to announce anything but their new console, today they announced Nintendo Music. This seems cool and not a rushed project, however it's making me a little scared for the future of the music industry. However, I already know nothing will ever happen, because nothing ever does.
The App
This app doesn't look rushed at all, and I completely mean that, no sarcasm in that sentence. The app could use a little better theming, I thought this was a partnership with YouTube Music when I saw it for the first time. But everything else looks good. The selection looks a little limited, however more tracks are promised to be coming soon.
I think some key features that set this app apart are the gaming focused features. For example, most soundtracks in games are seamless, you aren't supposed to be able to tell where they start and stop. So this app allows you to set a timer, and the track will keep seamlessly looping until then. Another cool feature is that you can hide spoilers for games. Really funny feature for a music based app.
This seems like a cool app for Nintendo fans, but I feel like you have to be a really specific type of fan to benefit from it. I'm not listening to Mario music on my morning commute, and I can't imagine myself doing that.
The Industry
So, this is where I become a little concerned, when I probably shouldn't be.
Nintendo has never really had their music available on streaming platforms. So being able to have a single place to stream it is cool. However, what worries me is if other people start copying this. For example, what if other video game companies that do have their music on streaming take it down for their own platform? What if labels start doing this? They won't, but what if?
Another thing is that Nintendo already did something similar with Pokemon. How do we know that this won't be shut down within a few years? How do we know that this won't end up getting abandoned? And does this mean that YouTube takedowns are going to become even more strict than they already are?