Rockstar Games wants to ensure that the next time you’re carjacking some fool, you’ve got an appropriate soundtrack backing you up.
There are many, many reasons to like the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Maybe you enjoy exploring the sandbox-style world. Perhaps you dig splattering pedestrians across the pavement at random. There are even some of you who get off on flouting the unspoken rules of Grand Theft Auto by driving in a sane manner, stopping at each intersection and never once whipping out an Uzi to spray a torrent of lead at the nearest police officer.
Of course, beyond that there’s my personal favorite reason to love the series: Its perennially fantastic soundtrack. No matter which GTA game you’re playing the radio stations found within vehicles offer a wide, diverse selection of music, not to mention hilarious talk radio options. Granted, Vice City and San Andreas have the best soundtracks, but given my age it’s very difficult to compete with the New Wave, Alternative and Gangster Rap stylings of the 1980s and 1990s.
Knowing full well how much fans adore their soundtracks, Grand Theft Auto creator Rockstar Games has opted to create playlists for each modern entry in the franchise for both iTunes and Spotify. While some of the songs found in the games don’t yet exist on these music services, the majority of them do and thus these official playlists are the best way to enjoy these games’ soundtracks without actually sitting down in front of your favorite gaming machine.
Intrigued? Pay a visit to Rockstar’s blog. There you’ll find a full list of each new playlist, sorted by game and the radio station those tunes initially appeared on, in both iTunes and Spotify flavors. Keep in mind that the iTunes playlists are simple compilations of extant music found on Apple’s iTunes Store, so you’ll need to pay for each track prior to using the playlist. The Radio Los Santos playlist from San Andreas for instance will set you back nearly $18. Spotify users however, are able to listen to these playlists for free owing to the radio-esque nature of that service.
Sadly, as these are just collections of music, the one major feature missing from these playlists are any of those aforementioned talk radio stations. Maybe one day Rockstar will license that audio out for distribution, but in truth, those comedy skits would lose a lot of their luster without accompanying gunfire and high-speed chases.
Source: Rockstar Games
