BODY: As Japan slides into tsuyu—the early-summer rainy season—Nintendo has found a fittingly seasonal excuse to get people singing. From June 5 at 10:00 a.m. to June 15 at 9:59 a.m. JST, Karaoke JOYSOUND for Nintendo Switch is hosting the "Rain and Rainbow Songs Grand Assembly: 10-Day Free Campaign."
The promotion unlocks a curated lineup of 30 songs themed around rain and rainbows—the kind of moody, melodic tracks that pair naturally with grey skies and the steady patter against the window. During the campaign window, players can sing these selections without needing an active paid pass, making it a low-commitment way to sample the software.
Karaoke JOYSOUND is the Switch's flagship karaoke app, normally operating on a ticketed or subscription-style model where users buy time-limited passes to access its massive song library. Periodic free campaigns like this one are how Nintendo and JOYSOUND keep the app in front of casual users between paid sessions, often tying the theme to the calendar—cherry blossoms in spring, ghost stories in summer, and now the rains of June.
For households, the timing is shrewd: the rainy season is exactly when outdoor plans collapse and families look for things to do indoors. A free karaoke window lands precisely when demand for at-home entertainment spikes.
The insider take
From Tokyo, these seasonal freebies read less like generosity and more like a finely tuned funnel. JOYSOUND knows tsuyu keeps people housebound, and a 10-day taste of unlimited singing is calculated to convert idle Switch owners into pass-buyers once the free songs lock back up. It's the same playbook karaoke chains have run for decades in their physical boxes—now ported to the living room. Expect a rainbow of these campaigns to keep appearing right on cue with each turn of the Japanese calendar.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).