Rockstar teams up with Amazon.com

28
Mar
2008
By Chris | 28th Mar 2008 at 00:31 GMT in GTA IV | 6 Comments

Yahoo has a new article up providing some additional details on Rockstar's Social Club that was revealed earlier today. Registering on the site will give you access to a service whereby you can download songs you hear in-game using Niko's cell phone. Yahoo's description of it:

Advertised throughout Liberty City, the cheekily-named "ZiT" technology is built into the game's mobile phone interface system. As players cruise around the world listening to the in-game radio, they can at any point 'mark' a song by opening their phone and dialing the number ZIT-555-0100. Gamers will then receive a text message with the song and artist names, and if they're registered at the forthcoming Rockstar Games Social Club community site, they'll find an e-mail waiting in their inbox with a direct link to a custom playlist on Amazon.com. All songs tagged "ZiT" will be stored here, available for preview and purchase at Amazon's going rate of $.89-$.99 per track. Best of all, those MP3s are free of the Digital Rights Management (DRM) limitations imposed on files downloaded through Apple's iTunes store and thus can be imported into any computer or digital device with no constraints.

Many of you may be thinking something along the lines of "well this is stupid, I'll just download the songs I want from iTunes or BitTorrent" - well, you will be hard pushed to actually find what you're looking for...

None of those tracks, however, are accessible outside the game, and that's where GTA IV's model really takes off. Rockstar has boldly proclaimed that GTA IV's soundtrack is "the biggest in the history of entertainment," and with over 200 tracks, we're not prone to argue. In addition to high-profile tunes from popular artists, the developers are aiming for music geeks by handpicking rare, hard-to-find songs such as Electrick Funk's 12-inch treasure "On A Journey" and Elton John's "Street Kids" off his relatively unheralded Rock of the Westies. Some artists have even contributed brand new songs written exclusively for the game, including "Vagabond (Liberty City Mix)" by the Greenskeepers and "War is Necessary" from iconic rapper Nas.

So it's actually a pretty good deal, provided you live in America - you're getting DRM free songs, legally, for less than a dollar a piece - the fact it's all integrated into the game itself is excellent.

Thanks to Charger for this interesting piece.

MarkD1990's photo
MarkD1990 28th March, 2008 @ 00:35 - Permalink

Awsome News

Artur's photo
Artur 28th March, 2008 @ 00:38 - Permalink

Sounds pretty cool. Won't be doing it but the soundtrack sounds amazing and huge!

-THE-DEALER-'s photo
-THE-DEALER- 28th March, 2008 @ 00:45 - Permalink

I think Rockstar have shot themselves in the foot! They say that the song's will be hard to come by. I do not think so, as they are giving a CD away with the special edition that contains all the music. All someone has to do is upload that to a torrent sharing site and then everyone will have it. They not think of that or something. Same goes for the artwork that will come with GTA 4 special edition.....Anyway rockstar.....Good luck with that idea... :rofl2: ...

rockstarrem's photo
rockstarrem 28th March, 2008 @ 01:58 - Permalink

The CD obviously doesn't come with ALL the music.

PhoenixGTA's photo
PhoenixGTA 28th March, 2008 @ 02:58 - Permalink
I think Rockstar have shot themselves in the foot! They say that the song's will be hard to come by. I do not think so, as they are giving a CD away with the special edition that contains all the music. All someone has to do is upload that to a torrent sharing site and then everyone will have it. They not think of that or something. Same goes for the artwork that will come with GTA 4 special edition.....Anyway rockstar.....Good luck with that idea... :rofl2: ...

The special edition CD will probably have at most 16 to 19 songs on it. Rockstar is saying there will be over 200 songs to choose from in the game to download, and many of those will be exclusively written for the game. But, on the other hand, you may be right. If the whole CD is all/only the GTA exclusive material that will be available, then the songs which are written for the game will not be beneficial to someone that has the CD. And I must agree with you that once the songs (and CD) are available, the torrent sites will have them within a few minutes of release, if not well before. :evil:

The Bossman's photo
The Bossman 28th March, 2008 @ 14:53 - Permalink

I still think every song will find its way online; people would probably just rip them directly from the game, do whatever else to it they do in terms of converting, and upload them all to either a Torrent site or a site like Rapidshare. I've noticed music from games for the PS1 appearing on the net, ripped directly from the game, so this will more than likely happen. Also, the package(s) might be given a completely different name, to avoid it being found by Rockstar.