Why the "Special Release," Nintendo?
Songs from Donkey Kong Bananza were added to the Nintendo Music app this week as a "special release" in addition to the usual weekly release, which this week was Super Mario Galaxy 2. The only catch with this being a special release is that only nine songs were added from Bananza! Why?!? The only other special (limited) release that has been done so far was a subset of songs from Kirby Air Riders, a game that isn't even out yet. Don't get me wrong, it's great to have more music added to the app, especially from a newer game, but this approach just makes no sense to me.
Truthfully, this special release in particular isn't really the issue. As I wrote back in January, the app is still solid overall and a nice value add to a Switch Online subscription, but it feels like Nintendo just keeps missing opportunities to take it further. Other than a sleep timer, none of the features I mentioned wanting to see added to Nintendo Music have been added. There is no app on the Switch or Switch 2, nor has the website gained any functionality. System customization on the Switch 2 is as absent as ever, and so are proper credits for each song in the app.
Releasing music at the same time as each game seemed to me like the smallest ask, and this special release really demonstrates to me that even that is not something we should ever expect to see happen. I would get having a delay between the game's release and adding the soundtrack to the app, adding a game to spoiler prevention is a slightly convoluted process and it's possible people would be spoiled if a song came up in one of the curated playlists in the app before they had the chance to actually play through the game themselves. However, I don't think that's what Nintendo chose to do with this. If they wanted to add the music after a delay then I would have expected this timing of the special release (about 2 months after the game came out) to be good timing for a full regular release. As it is, I don't expect the full soundtrack to be added any time soon, maybe in several months if we're lucky. It's nothing new for Nintendo to make unforced errors like this, but it really does suck that it keeps happening.