Nintendo released a [Nintendo Music app](https://www.nintendo.com/us/switch/online/nintendo-switch-online/nintendo-music/) recently. I am a little weirdo that likes to tinker with apps, so I figured I'd give my thoughts on the app. Please note that this is a review of the *technical* aspects of the app. I am not here to debate whether the library is good enough or whether Nintendo is a good company right now - plenty of that online already. Okay let's go. ✌🏾 --- ## Home Nintendo Music takes cues from every other music streaming service with its home page. You can find albums and playlists you recently listened to, top recommendations from Nintendo, featured playlists, and other associated ways of finding music to listen to. The places it differs are very Nintendo-y, so to speak. For example you can find playlists based on specific Nintendo characters like Pauline, Zelda, Ganon, or things like Boss Battles and Title Themes. They also separate Splatoon's music by the in-universe artists like Turquoise October and C-Side, which is interesting, but also a con that we'll discuss shortly. ![[A Technical Review of the Nintendo Music App-20241103102252257.png]] At the very bottom is where you can search by Game Title and Console - useful want to listen to a whole soundtrack instead of a vibes-based playlist. This library also shows up in the Search tab. Nintendo takes advantage of your data here by showing the games you already own at the top of the search list. ![[A Technical Review of the Nintendo Music App-20241103102305888.png]] ## My Music This is where your favorited and downloaded tracks are, pretty bog-standard. You can create playlists here as well, searching for any artist, song or game to add tracks. I also realized that you can share playlists and add other people's, but I did not find a way to simply search for someone's playlists - presumably another aspect of Nintendo not being willing to open themselves up to trouble given their "family-friendly" nature. ## Track Manipulation ![[A Technical Review of the Nintendo Music App-20241103102328093.png]] This is where Nintendo Music gets very interesting. When you click on a song you have your standard options, like adding it to the beginning or end of a queue, adding it to your favorites, downloading for offline use, etc. But then you can also extend a track's playtime, from 15 to 60 minutes. Not every track has it - it needs to have been loopable first - but it felt like it was possible for a vast majority of them. You can pair that with the track repeat and just listen to the Wii menu music 24 hours a day now, no YouTube video required. This is a genuinely cool feature that takes advantage of the fact that Nintendo made their own music app. ![[A Technical Review of the Nintendo Music App-20241103102340593.png]] This is also where Nintendo stumbles hardest in my opinion though. For one, it's kind of impossible to scrobble any of these tracks because Nintendo just doesn't include artist information in any of the music, which is gross. Like come on Ninty. I know who Koji Kondo is - give him his credit (and my last.fm stats). And possibly the biggest hiccup: no native casting on my Android phone. AirPlay works fine because it's system level, but I don't wanna use my work phone to listen to Aquatic Ambiance for 12 hours straight tbh, and casting all the audio from my phone to get the app to play through my speakers is irritating. It should just be built in! Or at the very least let me use a desktop app please. Quite the fumble imo. ## Final Thoughts Overall though: I'm honestly impressed by Nintendo Music as a piece of tech. It has almost everything I'd want in a music app with zero fluff, and avoids a lot of the ways that Nintendo can be irritatingly ideosyncratic in its design philosophies. I was fully expecting an app that would only let me listen to the **Majora's Mask** soundtrack on a full moon or whatever. It's nice to see that they understood that in some cases, less is truly more when it comes to a streamlined app.