Nintendo Video Game Music streaming service launches
Nintendo has launched a video game music streaming service, and it’s already turning heads. Could this be the start of a new trend?
Nintendo Video Game Music streaming service launches
by Bobby Owsinski from Music 3.0
There’s a lot of pushback these days against the major streaming services, and the reasons are many, which I’ll outline shortly. Now comes news comes that Nintendo has created a new streaming service just for the music of its video games and it’s already signed up a million subscribers. In my opinion, this is where the future of streaming is heading.
Why We’re Starting To Hate Spotify
Streaming services in general, and Spotify in particular, are starting to see their user numbers plateau or decrease for a number of reasons.
First, and this applies to primarily to Spotify, is that there’s so much music that’s showing up that’s either AI generated, or generated by the same person or production company. In fact, there are now playlists of the same song with different names and different composers. You’re going to see this all over the news soon now that an expose’ by Liz Pelly has been published, but it seems like most of these composers reside in Sweden, like Spotify, and Spotify has suddenly turned a profit and their CEO is selling his stock for millions. Coincidence? I think not.
Second is that streaming algorithms no longer work as promised. After gaining experience, they tend to feed you more of what you like, and fail to suggest new music that you might like. That makes for some boring listing.
Third is that there’s no difference between the major and even secondary streaming services as the music catalogs are all the same. The only thing that differentiates them is the UI, and if they have a high-resolution tier, if that’s important to you. As a result, users with more than one account are canceling them now that all the prices on virtually all services have gone up.
The Future Of Streaming
As a result, I believe that the future of streaming is in niche streamers, like what you’ll get from Nintendo Music. Soon you’ll have them for all genres of music. In fact, Primephonic, a service dedicated to classical music, was gobbled up by Apple in 2021, which proves that there’s a market and Apple saw the writing on the wall.
Obviously, licensing rights get in the way of any streaming startup, but I bet you’ll see both large record labels and other deep-pocketed entities begin the think about following in Nintendo’s footsteps as soon as they see its success. And we’re all going to be better off because of it.
Bobby Owsinski is a producer/engineer, author, blogger, podcaster, and coach. He has authored 24 books on music production, music, the music business, music AI, and social media.
