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How 'Grand Theft Auto' Is Changing the Way the World Experiences Music (rollingstone.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: GTA V and its multiplayer GTA Online mode has already proven itself a thriving game and money maker for both developer Rockstar and publisher Take-Two -- with sales approaching 100 million copies and bringing in more than $6 billion, now one of the most successful video games in history is also becoming something else, perhaps not too unexpectedly: A powerful tool for music discovery. Use of music has always been something video game makers Rockstar prides itself on. From the Billy Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington songs found in L.A. Noire, a detective action-adventure game, to the mix of 1970s rock in The Warriors game, music is one of the more important elements of pop culture that the developers use to help create memorable times and places for its titles.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the long-running Grand Theft Auto series. While the franchise has always featured some sort of working, in-game radio stations, each new iteration expanded on the concept. By 2013 and the release of GTA V, the game's 15 unique radio stations, packed with 240 fully licensed songs and pre-recorded on-air talent, had become nearly as important as the game itself. [...] In the five years since launch, GTA V and GTA Online gamers have listened to more than an estimated 75 billion minutes of music from the game's 18 radio stations, according to Rockstar's own analysis provided to Rolling Stone.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the long-running Grand Theft Auto series. While the franchise has always featured some sort of working, in-game radio stations, each new iteration expanded on the concept. By 2013 and the release of GTA V, the game's 15 unique radio stations, packed with 240 fully licensed songs and pre-recorded on-air talent, had become nearly as important as the game itself. [...] In the five years since launch, GTA V and GTA Online gamers have listened to more than an estimated 75 billion minutes of music from the game's 18 radio stations, according to Rockstar's own analysis provided to Rolling Stone.
Billie Holiday, not Billy. At least GTA taught Millenials about Alice in Chains. Yeah, at one point popular music was actually good here in the US. Hard to believe.
There is a lot of good music out there, but for the most part we lock ourselves into a particular genres. Normally after enough exposure to a point where we get it, we find that it isn't as bad as we thought. However exposure is the key and the real problem.
Video games, or movies, tv shows, etc...
Are a good way to create exposure. Because you will not normally make yourself sit down and Listen to music you don't necessarily like until you learned to like it.
If you don't like Rap, you are not going to listen to it for hours until you realize its appeal. or sit you way through an Opera so you can enjoy classical period music.
However you may play a game with the music in the background and you may get to a point where that song from the genres you hated you are actually looking forward to listening too.
The key to good music is repetition, and expectation. There is some out of the ordinary spice added to it, to make it interesting, but it will resolve back to the familiar.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You can thank the FCC for allowing companies like ClearChannel to buy up radio stations, homogenize them. It seems to me, that from there, they just drop an iPod Shuffle down on a table, add a few DJ breaks, and call it done, playing the same 50-100 licensed songs from there on out, except with an old "King Biscuit Flower Hour". In just a few years, they turned radio from a living, thriving medium to a time warp of 70s garbage, and made the medium all but worthless except for talk radio and pirate stations.
There seems to be a lot of radio stations but after awhile I find myself not even listening to it. It's the same repetitive songs and commercials every hour or so. It's like a Clear Channel station.
The solutions are make each station 4 to 5 hours long to make it less likely to run into stuff.
Integrate Spotify or insert music service here.
Quarterly music changes for as long as the game is officially supported.. aka while it earns money.
For a game that made 6 BILLION dollars, I think they can afford this feature.