The Music Licenses for Some of the Game’s Songs Are Going to Expire
One of the best parts of 2008’s Grand Theft Auto IV was its excellent soundtrack. It had alot of genre variety and featured lots of popular modern artists such as Kanye West and even had songs from classic artists such as David Bowie.
Unfortunately though, several songs from GTA IV’s tracklist are going to be removed later this month due to the music licenses for those songs expiring.
According to this report from Kotaku UK, an industry source is saying that an unknown amount of songs are going to be removed from GTA IV. However, the source couldn’t provide a list of songs that’ll be removed from the game. Kotaku UK reached out to Rockstar in order to find out more information but, as of right now, they haven’t received a response.
The music licenses are set to expire on April 26th and, according to the report, PS3 owners of GTA IV will receive a special message some time before that date that prompts them to download the digital versions of the songs that are slated for removal. It is currently unknown if PC and Xbox 360 owners of the game will receive the same message.
This isn’t the first time that the Grand Theft Auto franchise has had to deal with music licenses. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas had a PC patch that removed licensed songs and the PC version of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was temporarily removed due to a copyright claim for a Michael Jackson song.
What do you think about this rumored removal of licensed music in GTA IV? If you’re a PC user then are you planning on downloading any of the removed songs into an in-game playlist? If you’re a console user then are you going to digitally download the removed songs?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments section!