As everyone will be well aware the newest and biggest release by Rockstar Games has now hit the shelves. The much antisipated GTA IV is out and not just making waves in the gaming industry but the music industry too.

Rockstar Games music supervisor Ivan Pavlovich and his crew spent the last year-and-a-half compiling the soundtrack that brings the game to life, contacting more than 2,000 entities across four continents to secure the necessary music rights.

“We’ve really paid attention to what goes on in New York City and I think we really captured the music of the entire city, from different ethnic and social groups to different tastes of music,” says Pavlovich.

Music in the “Grand Theft Auto” series is split between several radio stations organized by genre, which gamers choose when they enter one of the many vehicles that serve as the primary gameplay experience. Each station is like a mini soundtrack of its own, allowing gamers to tune to their favorite every time they enter a new car. To help reflect New York’s diverse music scene, Pavlovich enlisted the help of several area DJs to produce or act as hosts for the stations.

With over 200 hundred individually sourced tracks and a music budget of over 2 Million, GTA IV is setting a bench mark for the use of audio in games and making the music industry prick up it’s ears. The popular franchise is a massive distribution platform. All past installments combined have sold more than 70 million units worldwide, and 32 million in the United States alone.