Crime pays for music biz with new Grand Theft Auto

By Antony Bruno

DENVER (Billboard) - When "Grand Theft Auto IV" reaches stores on Tuesday, the latest chapter in the wildly popular and controversial videogame franchise will make history on several levels.

First, it will have the largest soundtrack of any videogame. Second, it will be the first game that lets players tag songs in the soundtrack for subsequent purchase online.

And should it meet early sales forecasts, the handiwork of Take-Two Interactive Software's Rockstar game studio could break single-day and opening-week records, not to mention potentially becoming the best-selling game of all time.

Taken together, these feats make "Grand Theft Auto IV" the most important videogame release for the music industry since "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero III" on promotional and financial levels.

While the latter two games, released late last year, use music as the central gameplay element -- allowing gamers to play along to the included songs using special instruments/controllers -- "Grand Theft Auto IV" is a more traditional game, but still one in which music plays an important role.

The more sophisticated that videogames get in terms of storyline and presentation, the more important music becomes to setting that tone, and the music industry is demanding higher licensing fees as a result.

More so than most videogames, the "Grand Theft Auto" crime series has used music to establish the tone for each installment's storyline, setting and era. The plot for "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" was set in a Miami-like city circa 1985, featuring a soundtrack of '80s classics straight out of "Miami Vice." "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" fast-forwarded to the late '90s, in a setting resembling South Central Los Angeles and with a hip-hop-heavy soundtrack to match.

"Grand Theft Auto IV" brings the franchise back to its roots -- Liberty City, a fictionalized version of New York -- this time in present day. While the developers spent more than three years visually capturing the neighborhoods and people that inhabit this surrogate city,

Rockstar Games music supervisor Ivan Pavlovich and his crew spent the last year-and-a-half compiling the soundtrack that brings it to life, contacting more than 2,000 entities across four continents to secure the necessary music rights.

"We've really paid attention to what goes on in New York City and I think we really captured the music of the entire city, from different ethnic and social groups to different tastes of music," says Pavlovich.

Music in the "Grand Theft Auto" series is split between several radio stations organized by genre, which gamers choose when they enter one of the many vehicles that serve as the primary gameplay experience. Each station is like a mini soundtrack of its own, allowing gamers to tune to their favorite every time they enter a new car.

To help reflect New York's diverse music scene, Pavlovich enlisted the help of several area DJs to produce or act as hosts for the stations.

Fans of dance/electronica have Electro-choc, hosted by Francois "K" Kevorkian. Punk fans have Liberty City Hardcore hosted by Murphy's Law vocalist Jimmy Gestapo. Nigerian artist Femi Kuti spins international funk on IF99, while Ukrainian superstar Ruslana hosts the Vladivostok FM channel of Eastern European pop music.

MassiveB label owner/producer Bobby Konders, who hosts a reggae channel in the game, went to the trouble of flying to Jamaica and revoicing several existing songs by the original artists to add shout-outs that refer to fictional in-game locations. And DJ Green Lantern produced an entire station with all-original songs exclusive to the game rather than licensing existing tracks.

Although Rockstar won't disclose the exact number of tracks before the game is released, Pavlovich says it will "far exceed" the last installment of the series -- "GTA: San Andreas" -- which holds the current record for most songs in a soundtrack at 156. "Grand Theft Auto IV" features a record 16 music-based stations that generally hold 10-15 songs each. So expect more than 200 songs in the new title.