Seeing that there weren’t really anyone willing to take a swipe at this, I decided to step in and try to do the hard labor of typing them in manually per day. Which I did to a point until it was revealed to me that you could access the service’s API metadata in json format (thanks to @RuiNtD) and thus bypass regional locking. So I went into Mario Time, did some python scripting and hey presto, parseable tracklistings for MB:
### 2025-06-26 15:10:45.811202
メトロイド
タイトルBGM (1:46)
サムス登場ジングル (0:07)
ブリンスタ（岩ステージ） (1:46)
小ボス部屋（I）～クレイド (1:42)
ノルフェア（炎ステージ） (1:23)
小ボス部屋（II）～リドリー (1:04)
静寂 (0:57)
アイテム取得ジングル (0:04)
ツーリアン（基地ステージ） (0:42)
ゼーベタイト (0:35)
脱出 (1:14)
エンディング (2:14)
Playlist: 12 tracks, Duration: 0h13m33.845s
https://m.nintendo.com/shared/ja-JP/JP/officialPlaylists/793b7895-0257-4626-b547-5550eb1e0f1f
This really cuts down the working time, although there is still the task of binding tracks to possible CD versions. Which brings me to the next point: actually importing all of this data. I’ve created a series for easier accessability and tracking of releases I (and a small sample of others) have added, but following the discussions here I’ve adopted the following two principles:
- Set Release & Track Artist as “Nintendo Co. Ltd.”
- Set Release Group & Recording Artists as normally appropriate
This IMHO solves the two problems of searchability and artistic credit. Since Nintendo Music has set the artist as the company itself, we can have it as such on Release level. This approach provides two benefits in ListenBrainz: firstly, since it credits artists from the recording level, it will do so when they are properly linked, and secondly it makes the releases easier to find when linking tracks as an album group.
As for the used Release Group, I’ve taken the approach to set it as the game itself (“Other + Soundtrack”). It is by no ways perfect, and since some Nintendo Music “albums” utilize soundtrack CD releases, one could argue that they should belong in those release groups. But then there are edge cases like Animal Crossing: New Horizons or Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, where AC:NH uses recordings from two other Release Groups, and FE has recordings from a soundtrack release that has material from two different games. Nevertheless “games as Release Group” feel like a good catchall group for all the miscellaneous low-quality gamerip soundtracks that litter the database.
Returning to the data itself, Nintendo Music has regionally different localizations in terms of release and track names. This is by no means perfect: some games have localized titles, but the tracklisting is in English, or the titles are in English but the tracklisting are (partly) localized. The latter is easier, but the first requires some thought: should I just add every variant or should I stick with aliases?
Anyway, that’s my report. This is certainly a sizeable project, but when you have official metadata to add, it is worth the effort. Especially when there’s weekly additions to the service.
). Because it looks like that to me, a spotify with a very limited selection of music.
