Saturday, May 10, 2008

Sweet, I've Got A New ZiT!



If you're one of the millions of people who purchased Grand Theft Auto IV (or have ever played a GTA game ever) over the last week and a half, then you've probably noticed that there is lots of music inside of this game. This has generally been the case with GTA games as you've been able to choose radio stations to listen to while driving vehicles around the city.

This is a great feature of the game, but it's always been a pain in the butt if you wanted to find a song's title that was playing (as long as it wasn't on the soundtrack). That is, until now. In GTA IV you now have the ability to instantly get the artist and track of any song playing by using your in-game cell phone to text a request to a service called "ZiT." Once you've completed this task, you can then log into your newly created Rockstar Social Club profile to have a 30 second clip of every song you've "ZiTed" as well as an option to add it to an Amazon.com playlist for purchase later.

This is the first time that any video game has incorporated a way to purchase music from the game without leaving the game (sort-of, you do have to eventually go onto the internet to get the music) and is quite the leap forward for the music and gaming industry; not to mention it works great with the GTA franchise, known for good music with GTA IV having over 200 tracks on 16 stations, all for purchase on the Amazon MP3 store. By allowing such song information and purchasing power almost instantly, GTA and Rockstar Games have made life for the musically-curious significantly easier while offering a new way to purchase music that isn't offensive, in your face, over-priced, or just a bad idea (which is so often the case).

I recently tried this out with a song I had ashamedly forgotten about, Queen's "One Vision," however, after over 24 hours, I'm still waiting for the song to appear on my Rockstar Social Club profile. Granted this doesn't particularly make it impossible for me to purchase the song (I could just go onto iTunes or Amazon MP3 store and just purchase the song), but it makes it less convenient, something that is a coveted milestone in any service. However, I'm going to give Rockstar the benefit of the doubt since the Social Club launched the same day as the game and I suppose it still has a few kinks left to work out.

I think this is a great idea and a fabulous example of cross-platform collaboration for entertainment and sales benefit. A type of symbiotic relationship between the music industry and the gaming industry that has the potential to become a gaming staple and a somewhat profitable (if not simply a large single percentage portion of sales) part of the music industry. I can promise you will be seeing this type of "one-click" type sales of music in games in the future as the industries and fans alike both seem to be pretty excited about the new way to discover and purchase music.



Photo by Flickr user: dryxedryxe.
More on the music of GTA IV:
GTA Simplifies Song Purchasing
Music from GTA IV Rewiew
Webb Alert's Take
Reggaeton Gets 'Grand Theft' Push

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