Nostalgia can be a powerful, powerful thing and there are few things in life that help to channel nostalgia like music and gaming, especially in 2016. We see remakes and remasters of games launching on new systems a few times a year, and gamers are more than happy to pay for one of their favorite games from yesteryear once again. One game that perhaps defined a generationw as Pokemon, and now it’s back in the form of Pokemon GO, giving players the opportunity to – once again – hang out with Pikachu and the other original monsters from the 90s. Pokemon fans will no doubt remember the cheesy music that went with this phenomenon during the 90s, and since the launch of Pokemon GO, Spotify has seen a massive increase in Pokemon music.
As of writing, the Pokemon artist on Spotify now has over 350,000 monthly listeners and Spotify themselves is reporting a 362% jump in the amount of streams of the original and BEST theme, Gotta Catch ‘Em All. This original theme that opened the TV cartoon back in the day saw a 362% increase in streams from July 3rd to July 10th. It’s not hard to see why this sort of thing has happened, after all Pokemon GO launched over the weekend and has quickly become one of the most popular mobile games right now. Whether or not this sort of thing continues is debatable, but it seems as though at least for now, Pokemon GO is only going up. Spotify has long been about playlists, and since the launch of Pokemon GO, Spotify have seen almost 200,000 user-generated playlists containing their favorite Pokemon tunes.
All of the top five songs on Spotify are from the 2007 album “Pokemon X – Ten Years of Pokemon” which, for those hardcore PokeFans out there, includes songs from the Red and Blue, Gold and Silver and Ruby and Sapphire eras of the franchise. Other than that – as well as the soundtrack for the third movie featuring Entei – there isn’t really much Pokemon music to be had on Spotify, but that hasn’t stopped many people getting their sweet, sweet fix of nostalgia pumped straight to their ears.