GTA 6 songs: $7,500 per writer, no royalties, says Heaven 17
The offer made to British band Heaven 17 for a 1983 track puts a number on what Rockstar Games pays for a radio song. One flat payment of $7,500 per writer, no royalties, and a $98,000 counter-offer refused by Take-Two Interactive.
GTA6 LIFE
Rockstar Games offered $7,500 per writer, with no royalties on later sales, to use Heaven 17's Temptation in GTA 6, or $22,500 for the song's three writers. Under the industry's most favored nation rule, a full licence for the track comes to $45,000. Martyn Ware asked for $98,000 instead, and Take-Two Interactive turned him down.
Rockstar Games offered $7,500 per writer, with no royalties on later sales, to put Heaven 17’s “Temptation” in GTA 6. Martyn Ware, who co-founded the British band, made the offer public in September 2024. The 1983 track has three credited writers, so the sum on the table was $22,500, paid once and for good.
That figure doubles before the song reaches a radio station. The music industry’s most favored nation rule requires the owner of the recording to be paid exactly what the writers are paid, which brings a full licence for “Temptation” to $45,000, according to the breakdown jeuxvideo.com published on September 1, 2026. Ware pushed back and asked for $98,000. Take-Two Interactive said no.
What Rockstar offers in return is the streaming visibility a trailer slot gives a song. Two measurements put a number on it.
| Song | Streaming increase | Measurement window |
|---|---|---|
| “Love Is a Long Road”, Tom Petty, December 2023 trailer | 36,979% | 24 hours per jeuxvideo.com, one week per Universal Music Publishing |
| “Hot Together”, the Pointer Sisters, May 6, 2025 trailer | 182,000% | 2 hours |
Both percentages travel widely; their provenance does not. jeuxvideo.com credits the data firm Luminate for each of them. Universal Music Publishing, however, published the first one back in December 2023 on a week-over-week comparison rather than a 24-hour one, and the second surfaced as Spotify data relayed by The Hollywood Reporter, then by Insider Gaming on May 8, 2025. The number holds. Its origin does not.
The second half of the story starts after launch. Music licences used in games can expire after ten years, at which point the track vanishes from any updated digital build. An April 2018 update to GTA IV pulled 54 songs out of the game, and tracks were also cut from the Vice City and San Andreas re-releases.
Nothing physical offsets that clock any more. The Rockstar Store states plainly that the box sold on November 19, 2026 holds a code and nothing else: “Physical versions will only contain a download code inside the box to support pre-load on November 12. A disc will not be included in the box.” No copy will sit outside the reach of a later patch, which adds to what a download code already costs you.
Neither Rockstar Games nor Take-Two Interactive has answered Martyn Ware publicly since September 2024. The studio has not published how many songs it licensed for GTA 6 either, nor the list of its stations: the only tracks Rockstar has credited are the two trailer songs covered in the guide to the soundtrack and radio stations, alongside the 14 songs spotted in the Extended Look of August 27, 2026. The one hard benchmark sits in GTA V and its 241 licensed songs, spread across fifteen music stations.
