Rockstar announces GTA VI: The Album with 34 original tracks

Rockstar has put a name to the music campaign that has been running all week. On the morning of 17 September the studio published a Newswire post announcing Grand Theft Auto VI: The Album, a soundtrack record made with Atlantic Records and released on 19 November, the same day as the game. It holds 34 original tracks that, in Rockstar's words, "capture the electric energy of Grand Theft Auto VI's world of Vice City and Leonida".

Six of those tracks went up on streaming services the same morning. They are "That's It" by Yung Lean featuring Future and Metro Boomin, "RHYNO" by Travis Scott produced by Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo of Daft Punk, "Sexy Magic" by CA7RIEL and Paco Amoroso with PinkPantheress, Fred again.. and Etienne de Crécy, "Last Thing You Need" by Morgan Wallen, "Macacoa 2000" by Rauw Alejandro and "Bright Lights, Big City" by Keith Richards. RockstarINTEL lists their positions in the running order: tracks 2, 4, 5, 8, 11 and 32. That single detail says the six are scattered across the whole record rather than front-loaded, and that the other 28 titles stay secret until November.

The record also gets something the game does not. Rockstar's own store sells the album as a CD for $19.98, as a splatter vinyl of two transparent magenta discs for $49.98, and as a limited-edition vinyl of two magenta discs filled with blue liquid for $124.98. Blood Records, Best Buy, Walmart, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Urban Outfitters and independent shops each get their own disc colourway. Grand Theft Auto VI itself has no disc at all: the boxed copy ships a download code. Dexerto reported by the afternoon that the liquid-filled vinyl had already sold out for buyers in the UK and Europe on Rockstar's store.

The line worth rereading sits at the end of the post. Rockstar says more details about the music of Grand Theft Auto VI are coming, "including the dynamic score, the next evolution of in-game radio, and more". A dynamic score means music written to react to what the player is doing rather than a fixed track playing over a scene. What the phrase about radio covers, Rockstar has not said, and it described nothing beyond those seven words. Every claim currently circulating about celebrity-hosted stations or importing your own playlists comes from elsewhere and has no source at the studio.

The announcement also explains the past three days. On 15 September a group of musicians posted unreleased Grand Theft Auto VI artwork on their own accounts; on 16 September Spotify put the same pictures on billboards in New York, Los Angeles and Miami without a word of caption. Both were the run-up to this. Travis Scott had called his post "Phase 1", and the album is what phase one was pointing at. Two months before launch, the soundtrack is now the part of the game with the most concrete release plan attached to it.