Burn my wig in Ifrit's hellfire, the Final Fantasy soundtracks are now available for streaming

In a move that left my wig 90° off from where it's supposed to be, the company formerly known as Squaresoft has made a bunch of Final Fantasy soundtracks available on streaming services! I'd like to think that my rant on them not being available was the reason why, even thought it deadass hasn't nothing to do with this. But let me have it.

Square Enix make a fair amount of money retailing the physical releases of its Final Fantasy soundtracks, which is why I never saw them making any of them available for streaming. But they shut my ass up and did it and props to them for it. It's unknown whether they'll follow in the footsteps of companies like Capcom who release soundtracks around the time of respective game releases, as they did with Devil may cry 5 and Resident evil 2. But one can hope. Square Enix did put the Final Fantasy XV soundtrack up for streaming when the game first released, but it was a greatly reduced version. It at least had "Stand your ground" though and that is the only piece of music in that game that I cared about. No shade to Yoko Shimomura. She did a great job with that soundtrack. It's a shame it was wasted on such a mess of a game, but I won't get into that here. Speaking of Queen Shimomura, there is no sign of the Kingdom Hearts soundtracks and no Parasite Eve, which is just disrespectful.

The catch with the Final Fantasy soundtracks now being available however, is that all of the song titles are in Japanese, with the exception of Final Fantasy VIII. Square Enix literally clicked a checkbox to make soundtracks which were once for Japan's ears only, available globally. So, Japanese titles bitch. Unless your Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji reading skills are at a 10, be prepared to have the soundtrack track listings open in one window and try and match the track numbers. The Final Fantasy soundtracks also are also not separated by disc on neither Apple music or Spotify, just to make it that bit more tricky for you. AND (it gets better) the metadata of the soundtracks is all a complete mess, at least on Spotify. Songs are credited to different artists and the soundtracks are released by Various artists instead of the Square Enix sound team, which would have made more sense and kept everything grouped together, but...this is Japan. They are raggedy when it comes to anything concerning metadata and tagging. Just look at Perfume's streaming listings with the albums arts featuring white gaps around the edges.

Streaming feels like it's been around forever, yet it still feels kinda new. We have only just reached a point where artists and record labels really get it and are embracing it. Not necessarily by choice mind, you. But, we are where we are with it now. But the video games industry feels like it's several years behind. I'm not sure whether it's licencing issues, costs which are involved or if it's as simple as companies being oblivious and thinking that nobody would bother to stream a video game soundtrack. But I've love for things to reach a point where video game soundtracks go up on streaming services as a game is released.

The Final Fantasy soundtracks are not available on Google music however, but I'm not wholly surprised. Japan for the most part seem to forget Google Play music exists. There are a shit load of big J-releases and artists which are on Spotify and Apple music, but not on there. Also, not every Final Fantasy soundtrack is available.

Now, if Nintendo and Namco could start making some of their game soundtracks available, that'd be great.

ℹ️ As aforementioned, the tagging and grouping of the soundtracks on both Spotify and Apple music is a mess. So to ensure that you find them all, search for 🔍 Final Fantasy original soundtrack specifically and they should all show.