The GTA 6 soundtrack: what is actually confirmed
Around twenty songs, no station names, and for once a music industry that's written into the plot itself.
Last updated
By Wes Calloway
Updated 31 October: this piece is from September, before Rockstar said anything. Since then it's named six radio stations and their hosts, confirmed *Grand Theft Auto VI: The Album* with 34 original songs for 19 November, and announced Justice's original score for 11 December. Those two pieces have the current picture.
Radio carries a lot of weight in a Grand Theft Auto game. It's how the world talks, it's where the satire lives, and it's why people can still hum a station from a game they last played a decade ago.
So far Rockstar hasn't announced any station names or a tracklist, and it hasn't said anything about presenters, genres, or whether it's commissioned original music. What we've got is roughly twenty songs identified across official material.
Confirmed from official material
- Love Is a Long Road, Tom Petty, 1989, from Trailer 1
- Hot Together, The Pointer Sisters, 1986, from Trailer 2
- Thunder Island, Jay Ferguson
Another fourteen or so have been identified in the Extended Look, which is sanctioned footage and not a leak. That takes the confirmed total to around twenty.
One caveat to hang onto: trailer music isn't necessarily radio music. Rockstar has used tracks in marketing that never made the game and put songs in the game that never appeared in a trailer. These are confirmed to exist in Rockstar's licensing. They aren't confirmed as station rotation.
Several artists have also publicly mentioned working with Rockstar. None of that's a confirmed placement, and we're not listing it as one.
The trailers skipped the synthwave
Tom Petty isn't an eighties Miami pastiche. Neither, quite, is the Pointer Sisters track. Both trailers deliberately avoided the synthwave-and-neon shorthand everybody expected from a game called Vice City, which suggests a soundtrack a lot broader than the marketing palette.
How big it could get
Grand Theft Auto V launched with over 240 licensed songs across 17 stations. Grand Theft Auto Online eventually pushed the library past 750.
For a game set in a city with Miami's musical history, with a story that runs through a recording studio, matching that is the floor. There's plenty of room to go past it.
Music is in the plot this time
This is the real departure. Dre'Quan Priest is a promoter whose actual ambition was always music. Boobie Ike owns the recording studio. Real Dimez are an act with a name, a look and a place in the business network.
Previous games kept the industry on the radio and in the jokes. This one's written it into the story.
Our music section tracks this as it firms up.
Are you playing GTA 6 on day one?
Votes are anonymous. One per browser.
Sources
Keep reading
Justice scored GTA 6, and the new single "Pusher" has Gesaffelstein on it
Rockstar's confirmed a full adaptive score from Justice. The vinyl's up for preorder, it lands on 11 December, and nobody can agree how many tracks are on it.
2 min read
Did Rockstar really try to get Daft Punk back together for GTA 6?
A music leaker says Daft Punk were offered "a final comeback" and an open budget, and that Justice were Rockstar's second choice. Nobody's confirmed it.
1 min read
GTA 6's first six radio stations, who hosts them, and the change that lets you hear them on foot
Flash FM is back. Bad Bunny, Burna Boy, two members of Slayer and Trick Daddy are behind the microphone. And for the first time, the radio follows you out of the car.
3 min read