The GTA 6 trailer’s music has seen an unprecedented amount of growth in popularity according to Spotify. They spoke with the BBC and shared some very interesting data.
What happened?
The soundtrack to the trailer is Love Is A Long Road by Floridan singer/songwriter Tom Petty. Rockstar Games mix it in with the gorgeous and stunning visuals from their game and it has instantly revived the song’s popularity.
The world record breaking trailer has been viewed well over 100 million times on just Rockstar Games’ official upload alone. There’s a good chance over 100 million people heard the song for the first time yesterday.
The song spikes on Spotify
The biggest music streaming platform Spotify have told the BBC streams of the song rose by 36,979% compared to last week. They also shared to the BBC they’ve never seen a song sky rocket like this before.
A recent example given to the BBC was Linda Rondstadt’s Long Long Time when it was featured in The Last of Us TV show. Its streams increased by 4,900%. This staggering reveal really shows the effect Rockstar Games have on culture.
Love Is A Long Road is not one of Petty’s more popular songs. We can see this in a comparison of how it has 11 million streams vs the 600+ million of Free Fallin’, his most popular song on Spotify.
The song now has 1.9 million views which is a few hundred thousand than before the trailer. Additionally, thousands of comments have been left on the talking about how now this very underrated song from Petty will be one of his more popular songs in present day.
Rockstar responds
This is not the first time Tom has contributed to GTA games. His official Twitter/X account that continues his legacy Tweeted “Tom loved contributing “Runnin’ Down A Dream” to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, so it is an honor to have “Love Is A Long Road” featured in Trailer 1 for Grand Theft Auto VI from @RockstarGames . #PettyForever”.
You can also spot a Petty Forever sticker on the right side door glass of the store Lucia and Jason burst through; Tom’s account also shared this little Easter egg.
Spotify say the recent GTA playlist they put together for Rockstar Games’ 25th anniversary has been liked more than half a million times.
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