Another Popular YouTube Channel Pulls Nintendo Music After 500+ Copyright Claims

My ears are crying...

You really have to wonder how long it'll be until Nintendo realizes just how much money they're missing out on by not officially releasing their music (outside of Japan anyway) and by not putting them on streaming services anywhere...

I'm always holding out hope that they'll learn someday, and while I'd love to believe that this and the Pokémon stuff is a sign it's really hard to do so considering their past actions.

I was gonna play a game over sound effect from Mario, but Nintendo deleted that too.

@Polley001 How much money is Nintendo missing out on?

Just make a crappy streaming service already, Nintendo. Missing out on such easy money, people are willing to pay for his!

Even better, release CDs and vinyls of the full OSTs! People would be even more diehard about that I would imagine. Best we get is a 10 song sound selection in some special editions of games, and that truly is pathetic.

Sigh, Nintendo should just put all their music on Spotify like Sega has... As it stands right now I doubt they lose any money from these YouTube channels. Unlikely people only buy their games to listen to the music!

The Nintendo ninjas strike again!

Another day, another depressing case of Nintendo being Nintendo.😩

@HotGoomba
Here is the song.
https://youtu.be/BVQ_JHmvhCM

Let us all defend this poor billion- dollar corporation! They never do anything wrong ever and should have every right to squeeze their fans dry in the name of their holy copyrights!

They're just protecting their precious IP from devaluation and unsanctioned use!

Sooner or later Nintendo will come around on this issue...right?...yeah sadly probably not.

Stay classy, Nintendo!

I have to honestly say I find it harder and harder by the day to stay a Nintendo fan. If they keep going down the road they're on now, maybe I'll become a PC gamer or something. And I'll just emulate all the good stuff Nintendo still happens to put out. And if they complain, I'll just not play anything Nintendo anymore aside from my retro consoles from times where Nintendo still has a soul.

We're not there yet though. I'll probably wait and see what they'll do in the next generation at the very least.

I use this channel for my video game music playlist. This really sucks but I'll find a way around it

Frustrating.
If they were in competition with some official means of listening I'd understand.

I have visions of Doug Bowser trawling the Nintendo archives listening to all the music while sending out copyright claims with a smug grin on his face.

It's really annoying.
I use YouTube to listen to Nintendo music all the time

@Mauzuri True words, my friend. Sad but true words.

E3 Leak!

Nintendo unveils the Nintendo Music app, exclusive to the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pass! Listen to your favorite game soundtracks straight from your Nintendo Switch console! Launches with the Mario Galaxy, Ocarina of Time and Hong Kong 97 soundtracks! More to be added bimonthly!

“ my non-Nintendo.”

And there-in lies the problem. These YouTubers do now own this music. Nintendo does.

I'm not sure why Nintendo are not even making a "Topic" channel for their music...

I mean Sega did it a few years back. (Not sure when exactly but I think it was in 2018).

Interesting this list includes F-Zero music. I thought they had left F-Zero to rot. I know realistically this means nothing, but I would at least like to think this means a new F-Zero game is in the making...

...let me go get my clown makeup.

Is it that hard for Nintendo to make their own YouTube channel and post all of their music there? Or on Spotify? Nintendo truly does live in the past.

The company that in the 2000s said gamers don't want online games continues to be out-of-touch.

Right… time for me to get the shotgun again (just kidding, don’t really have one).

@Mauzuri I opened my eyes once I saw just how bad Mario Tennis Aces actually was 4 years after it launched.

Ah nothing new

Nintendo, a company that doesn't want you money.

There are so many ways to provide the music of their franchises legally AND earn money.

Yet they rather spend money (because getting after these people that provide their music, it surely does cost some amount of money though) on taking down the stuff people want to be able to listen to, and most of them would even pay for.

But no

"we don't want your money"

• Nintendo

@Mauzuri Nintendo Life will never live down giving Paper Mario Sticker Star 8/10 in their review

@Ruler-Of-All-Evil @Mauzuri I opened my eyes when I played Pilotwings Resort on the 3DS and realised it had about half as much of the content as Pilotwings 64...

Nintendo are missing out on so much money. If they released the soundtracks on Cd they would sell out constantly. And they could even put their own official channel on Spotify or on YouTube! Why don’t they do that! Cmon Nintendo,

Why does this company has such bizarre contempt for its fans and legacy?

At first I thought Big N had plans to launch either an audio streaming service or physical soundtrack collections of all their tracks, but as the years have passed, this has proven to be false.

Unfortunately it's within their legal rights to do what they want, even if it's just to piss everyone off by virtue of "just because they can".

@dustinbriggs1991 Did you just tag everyone in here?

Nintendo, you keep pulling your music off the Internet and not providing easier access to it via streaming services, people are just gonna keep pirating said music tenfold with no remorse.
How many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man?

To properly manipulate your audience, it's best to enrage them.
Enraging people is best done by misleading them to some degree. So, NL publishes there 1000th article pretending Nintendo is somehow unreasonable here, and then watch the comments and clicks come rollllling in. We get to be upset and misinformed, and NL gets our engagement. That's the exchange.

And still the cancellation of the Ai Nirvana Special Edition goes unreported. Just bizarre.

PS - yet, my feeling enraged about the misinformation also compels me to click and comment

The amount of games I started playing because I heard music tracks is unbelievable. So killing off every means to do so is just harsh!

We keep talking about how Nintendo is missing out on a large amount of money... but how much? YouTubers are rather clear that ad-revenue on a video is not that much and have to supplement their income with Patreon and merch. For a YouTuber to be a millionaire they basically need to pull in Pewdiepie level views. A video to make a $1000US need to get at least 500,000 views on YouTube and 250,000 listens on Spotify.

That may sound like easy money for Nintendo, but for Nintendo to pull in $100,000USD they'd need 500,000/250,000 views/listens across 100 individual tracks. If they want to make that if they post the albums instead on YouTube Nintendo would need to upload 100 albums.

Now could Nintendo realistically be able to do that? Sure. But are they really missing out on that much money? Not really no compared to their games, consoles, online subscriptions and merchandise.

Not defending them taking it down the tracks, but let's not pretend this is a massive money making enterprise they are missing out on. Let's add some perspective to this discussion before we talk about how Nintendo is losing out on millions.

Honestly Nintendo doing this does NOTHING, really. If you cut off one head of a Hydra…

@nimnio I think fans want a place to listen to the music, but I do agree calling Nintendo "out of touch" is a bit of a 'woe is me' argument.

That and we also ignore Nintendo could have agreements with the composers to provide them with revenue for re-releases or re-distribution of their music. I know Square Enix has this agreement with Koichi Sugiyama who makes a killing off of the orchestral arraignments and consort releases... it's one of the reasons Dragon Quests' OST sound quality is really bad in the games themselves.

I think a lot of people tend to generalize and don't really think through their arguments all that well. Using the "out of touch" argument without even discussing revenue, IP rights or composer compensation is a really... really bad argument.

radio.gamethattune.com

@HotGoomba This was actually funny.

NINJA APPROVED

@Wexter Yeah the arguments I'm seeing here for why people are mad just smells of knee jerk reactions of wanting access to the thing.

1) 'Think of the money Nintendo is losing out on by not putting it on streaming.' Yeah, but isn't it well know people who put stuff on streaming services make next to no money? Also I do import music from shows and games from Japan, and there has to be some deals going on with this stuff. Like it's weird how you can have a OST for a show, but all the vocal tracks aren't there. Instead on a seperate CD, not always the case but it happens so much.

2) 'Nintendo is out of touch.' Because they don't do the thing you like. I know someone mentioned them not wanting to do online because gamers don't want it. Mean while Nintendo was also in Japan ahead of the curb with online distribution. I think that mind set was how in America at that time broadband stuff was kinda rare. Xbox live wasn’t even a thing for a chunk of the X-box being on the market. Also kinda odd comment to make when Nintendo has the numbers to back up what they are doing. Gamers may not like it but the world isn't full of hard core gamers.

3) 'Why defend a corporation about this?' I hate this the most because copyright is something that should be protect because it can hurt small people as well. Companies have completely ruined the spirit of what copy write was ment to be used for. It is there to protect the rights of people who own that thing though.

Even though the fingers should be pointed at Nintendo, don't forget that copyright law, in general, has never given two shiitakes about small creators despite copyright existing for that purpose. It never takes context into consideration (most certainly doesn't take fair use as well). Is it any wonder why Nintendo fan games are almost always shut down even though they fall under fair use?

Sometimes I wonder if it is Nintendo, or is it just their fanboys. I know Nintendo is Nintendo, but it just feels off , even for them, to hunt down vgm channels. Oh well, maybe some day Nintendo will release their music to the public.

@Mauzuri You are indeed correct!

Once again, I find myself asking why didn't Nintendo just release official soundtracks on CDs or streaming services? Or make their own steaming service? They must be missing out on huge money, and I don't know the legal stuff behnad them making a streaming service for track ls from their games, bit it sounds like they are thriving away loads of free money

@AnnoyingFrenzy I don't know if you're joking, but I'd pay for this

@Hyperfairy777 I answered this above. Not as much as you think. To make 100,000USD Nintendo would need 100 tracks/albums on YouTube to be played over 500,000 times each. Yes, some of these videos on YouTube have millions of views... others maybe a couple of thousand views. It is kind of a crapshoot to know how much actual revenue Nintendo would make. As an estimate, if they posted each track individually and each ad was engaged with (this is required to get ad revenue), Nintendo might pull in some revenue that would need to be split with their composers and song publishing houses they'd maybe pull in a few hundred-thousands. If we're talking about anything close to a million USD Nintendo would need around 1,250,000,000 views in total. That's a LOT of views we're talking PewDiePie numbers on each individual video.

Now that you know these numbers how altruistic do you think people are with just re-uploading and monetizing content they don't own? A few hundred thousand is not a lot to Nintendo, but it is a lot to a random nobody.

The thumbnail to this article is accurate.

Luigi: Us, enjoyers of Nintendo music.
Mario: Nintendo listening to our music, glaring angrily and preparing the copyright claims.

nintendo is still nintendo

at least they don't get my money and also not getting any money on yt and spotify

The f is going with Nintendo lately? I really bet Nintendo only cares about money, their IP, and not their fans. Why haven't they released a channel dedicated to their soundtracks?

@KingBowser It's almost like Nintendo is a COMPANY!

I am happy Nintendo takes down these blatant pirated soundtracks off of Youtube.

And let's make one thing clear. A pirate is never a fan.

Deoxys was my primary source for Splatoon music. It's such a shame that they are going away too...

@sanderev
I think Nintendo's restrictions would only be justified if Nintendo actually releases the soundtracks themselves rather than forcing players to carry a Switch around to listen to video game music.

This is a Nintendo policy i will never agree on.

Even if Nintendo decided to finally add their music on the internet, they would probably charge money for each individual song, albums would have bad sound quality, would have missing tracks, and wouldn't have those unreleased tracks that dataminers found hidden in the code.

@ModdedInkling "You don't release it so I may steal from you" Doesn't hold anything in a court of law.

Also Nintendo HAS released Splatoon OSTs for you to purchase: https://www.play-asia.com/search/Splatoon+OST

Well, here's the thing... we DO have a baseline for how much Nintendo could be making from uploading their music to Spotify because other people have already uploaded it there before. If you search for "Super Mario 64" on Spotify, you'll find an account that has uploaded rips from the OST. If we total up the rips and covers in the playlist on their profile (which I'm not sure why the other songs have gotten taken down but not the profile...? But it's fair to assume the plays for the covers and OST would be similar) we get a number of 30,000,000 for an unfinished album. In that case, using the average CPM Spotify pays out to artists, we get between $90,000-150,000.

Now that doesn't seem like much, but we need to take into account two things: for one, this would cost Nintendo next to nothing to do, making everything basically profit. If you hire someone or a team to manage these accounts, all they would need to do is find the soundtracks, gather and organize them, and hit upload. That's it. It requires the most minute amount of effort on their end because all the work has already been done for them. They quite literally are sitting on a goldmine of music and not profiting off it whatsoever. It's not the same as releasing old games, since that requires making an emulator, getting the bugs fixed, updating it, getting rights to titles, and having to compete with fanmade emulators. This is something they could spend a month on and just sit back and profit. And of course, secondly, we aren't accounting that this is Nintendo of all companies. If they made a big deal that their music is now available everywhere, like Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud, YouTube, etc. and they had all of their most popular OSTs available to boot, that is a ton of cash. If they made, say, $250,000 per full album at minimum (fair if they advertised it) and released 100 albums, that's $25,000,000 AT LEAST for just uploading OSTs of their most popular 100 titles. If they uploaded their whole catalog, they could quite easily make a quarter of a billion in a financial quarter (which would be a very favorable boost to their profits).

The napkin math may not work out exactly that way, but it absolutely would be nowhere near the lowball estimates that I've been seeing in the comments. It honestly just doesn't make sense from a business standpoint to not capitalize on this when you can be making free money. Profit is profit.

@HuddyTheBuddy The napkin math I did was more a rough estimate to give an idea of how many views Nintendo would need individually to make that kind of income. Based on some sleuthing around YouTube big hitters like Mario and Zelda pull in the most views (followed by Splatoon, Fire Emblem and Xenoblade). Other series like F-Zero or other more "obscure" games don't pull in millions of views and barely break 50,000 views on YouTube. Hence my more lowball numbers.

Would it cost Nintendo next to nothing to do? Not quite as they do need to work out compensation for their composers, and any channel managers. But, it would be worth pursuing to make what basically amounts to pocket change for a multibillion dollar company. And we're also looking at lifetime views for these re-uploads not how many views they got within a year so some of these videos may be pulling in close to no revenue at all.

Though that would not stop re-uploaders even if Nintendo did this. Notice some of these channels saying they won't host Nintendo content also re-upload other available game OSTs from official sources? This happens with movie trailers all the time as well as it does not matter if Disney/Marvel host trailers for stuff like Dr. Strange MoM on their YouTube channel every other clickbait channel just rips the trailer from Disney and re-uploads it to make a quick buck.

Hence my suspicion about how much defending there is on this thread for these channels. It is bare minimum work and they pull in large amounts of money even if EA, Ubisoft or Nintendo makes these tracks available.

There is a legal way to obtain Nintendo Music (including the Pokémon DP Sound Library) and the website is for a non-profit organization called the Internet Archive. Available at https://archive.org/

@sanderev
In the modern era, not everyone has the capabilities of converting CDs to a digital format. They want the convenience of getting it right to their phone, no unnecessary hurdles.

@ModdedInkling
Yeah i do feel like it is nice to have options for these things (the same reason i wish you could buy the NSO games to keep)

For example square enix has been doing well lately in making their music available lately, including physical CD's Blu-rays and digitally via services like spotify, amazon music and even their own dedicated music channel.

@Mgalens While I agree with the sentiment... it does not stop people from re-uploading the music to YouTube (which is flooded with unathorised re-uploads of Final Fantasy, Xenogears, Dragon Quest and Chrono soundtracks). The more I think about this issue the more I think the entire enterprise of re-uploading music to YouTube by uploading your soundtracks to YouTube, Spotify and CD re-prints is a waste of time for these companies.

I'd like an easier way to own the Xenoblade Soundtracks (without the massive import fees)... but I don't think this issue is as easy as we are making it out to be.

I hate being the Debbie downer sometimes. :<

@Wexter
The Xenoblade 2 ost at the very least seems to be available digitally but sadly not the first or X/DE

i think square did go after some uploads but have different policies depending on the game (i think FFXIV music is still allowed as long as there is gameplay attached)

i feel at the very least it could hopefully build up some goodwill since it feels like the general annoyance is less that nintendo are taking these down and more the lack of an alternative.

but yeah i definitely would love to see more ost's become more readily available. i have imported a few soundtracks in the past but nowadays a lot of the ones im interested in are digital (i bought the trails to Zero and Trails to Azure ost for example, and i think the FFVII remake ost is also digital along with the various FFXIV expansions)

500+ videos! Just goes to show the scale of this persons crime. I respect Nintendo for standing by something they do strongly believe in. And I hate to see all the negativity whenever something like this happens, why the shock. I imagine millions of people have copies of these songs and pass them around in small numbers, I don’t see Nintendo beating down their doors, but if you do things like this person then…..

@ModdedInkling CD is already a digital format. And sure, it might be harder now to rip a cd. (Which is why I still have my BluRay drive in my PC) and I actually do use it for music I like that's not on Apple music (mostly soundtracks, indeed)

Also one look at Amazon for "USB CD Drive" gives enough cheap results for anyone to solve this problem on their own.

@Mgalens That's fair! I would love Nintendo to embrace their soundtracks more as Fire Emblem, Xenoblade and so many others have such amazing music!

I hope Nintendo in the future makes their OSTs easier to get in the US. Or if I find myself in Japan in the near future I know I will be stopping in a few Otaku stores to snag me some soundtracks

@sanderev
CD is a physical digital medium as opposed to a physical analog medium. However, it's not a "digital digital" medium as in the files themselves aren't available strictly as a .mp3 or .mp4 file on the cloud rather than being saved onto a physical medium such as a disc. Come on, I didn't need to explain that!

Ripping CDs is a workaround solution, as opposed to something a little more direct like what Square-Enix has - a YouTube channel with music. When that sort of option exists, and a company refuses to provide such an option (especially on platforms that do offer paid methods as opposed to simply being free), then it's a problem.

To sum it up, the whole problem of this isn't that there isn't any option to get Nintendo music. It's the fact that Nintendo does not provide their music in the same manner as companies do, despite having the option to do so.

@ModdedInkling But my point is, nobody can be forced to release something if they don't want to. And no pirating from them is not allowed.

Also you were comparing a CD to a digital format. And I simply said, CD are a digital format. Audio / data is stored in 0s and 1s on the disc. As opposite an LP, which stores analog audio in special grooves.

If you "rip" a CD to a Lossless (wav, etc) format, you get a perfect 1:1 copy of the contents of that disc. And sure you can then decide to throw away some of the disc's content and make an mp3 file.

And ofcourse you'll need hardware that is capable of playing a CD, just like you need hardware capable of playing a Youtube video. My Hifi CD player would never be able to play any Youtube video, but it will play any CD perfectly. And then I'd rather have a nice shiny disk with perfect audio, than a YT video with YT compression destroying around 80% of the music.

Nintendo really doesnt know what its audience wants….

Looking for updates release dates for Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, Neon White, outer wilds, and no mans sky

@KingBowser Agreed. At this point, they are just LETTING themselves go bankrupt from everything they aren’t doing.

Probably a faker again, like so often.