Nothing sets the vibe for a video game quite like the music that accompanies it. Rockstar Games has excelled in this sense; its selection of songs added to the various radio stations in Grand Theft Auto titles over the years has left keen memories in the minds of those who play them.
The latest installment in the series, Grand Theft Auto 5, has the most songs to choose from with sixteen radio stations and more than four hundred tracks between them. However, fans recently noticed one song has been removed from the Space 103.2 radio station without any announcements from Rockstar: “Can’t Hold Back (Your Lovin’)” by Kano. Unfortunately for Grand Theft Auto fans, each song attained by Rockstar has a hefty license fee attached to it, along with a license expiry date. To renew these licenses once expired, Rockstar would have to pay fees. With more than four hundred tracks in GTA 5 alone this is simply not feasible, even for a giant like Rockstar, though it has been this way for a long time.
Music Removal in Previous GTA Titles
GTA 5 is still in its middle-aged years, so most of the song licenses are still valid. For earlier releases such as Grand Theft Auto 4, fans were not so lucky. Rockstar has a long history of removing songs, and GTA 4 was no exception. As the game reached its tenth anniversary, an update patch removed more than 35 songs across 10 radio stations, which wasn't quite the anniversary gift fans were hoping for. However, to compensate, Rockstar added eleven new songs to Vladivostok FM, the station with the largest number of songs removed. Although these extra songs will have required new song licenses, the expense will have been considerably cheaper than renewing all the ones removed.
GTA 4 wasn’t the first game to have its song repertoire altered over time. Rockstar’s 2004 release Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas saw the beginning of expired song licenses, including “Express Yourself” and Tom Petty’s “Runnin’ Down a Dream.” Players on Steam can re-access the old version by downgrading their games, or by following one of the links found on the various GTA forums. This will revert the game back to how it was before the update patch that removed songs. Fortunately, fan-favorite “A Horse with No Name” retained its position on K-DST, so players can continue to drive through the sands of Bone County listening to America’s liberating tones.
The 1980s pop culture scene of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City also sees the removal of multiple songs, including Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and “Wanna be Startin’ Something,” both of which were played on radio station Fever 105. Unlike the other GTA titles, Sony Music Entertainment had the Michael Jackson songs blocked from the game on grounds of copyright, rather than the simple issue of expired song licenses. Understandably, this dispute was problematic for Rockstar, leading to a halt in digital sales for GTA: Vice City.
Although the soundtrack to a video game is part of what makes it so unique, the removal of songs from Grand Theft Auto is unavoidable, and players should anticipate it for the future of Grand Theft Auto 5. On the bright side, new editions that Rockstar has in store for its fans likely make the axing of popular songs a bit easier to bear.