Bob Moses didn’t have to steal a car, pull off a heist, or even pick up a controller to score big with Grand Theft Auto VI.
All the Canadian electronic duo needed was a killer song and an email from Rockstar Games.
They say their 2021 collaboration with British musician Elderbrook, Inner Light, has racked up more than 50 million additional streams since being featured in an extended trailer for the game in late August.
Fans have waited more than a decade for GTA VI, which finally arrives Thursday. But Inner Light has already taken on a life of its own, spreading across social media and reaching listeners far beyond the electronic music scene.
Vancouver’s Tom Howie and Jimmy Vallance, who formed the Grammy-nominated duo in 2012, say their manager emailed them earlier this year with a request from Rockstar to use their song, with few details about how it would be featured.
“We were like, sweet, GTA is a big game. And then we sort of forgot about it,” recalls Howie.
Months later, their phones lit up with messages from people they hadn’t heard from in years.
WATCH | Extended look features Bob Moses song:
It turned out Inner Light had landed a prime spot during the trailer’s climax, its haunting, synth-driven melodies underscoring an emotional speech about living in one’s “glory days.”
“It became the part that everyone clipped and re-shared and kind of made the song go viral,” says Vallance.
Spotify says the track saw a 500 per cent surge in streams since the trailer dropped, with daily additions to listeners’ playlists increasing by more than 3,000 per cent.
The unexpected success comes as musicians face mounting pressure to create viral moments in an increasingly crowded streaming landscape.
Jimmy Vallance, left, and Tom Howie of the Vancouver-based electronic music duo Bob Moses. (Hunter Monero/The Canadian Press)
Vallance says the experience reinforced something the duo has learned over years of navigating an industry reshaped by TikTok and social media: there’s no reliable formula for a hit.
“You can’t engineer this in a lab,” he says.
“Someone somewhere liked a song that we wrote one day and put it in the trailer, and then that connected with millions of people.”
The duo says they were paid a relatively modest licensing fee.
“I forget how much money it was, but it’s not enough to remember,” says Howie.
“The opportunity is definitely in the potential for the reach, not in the paycheque.”
Toronto music supervisor Heather Gardner says that’s not unusual.
Gardner, president of the Guild of Music Supervisors Canada, says a placement in a gaming behemoth like GTA can be valuable even when the licensing payment itself isn’t especially lucrative.
“It’s such a cultural icon,” she says of the franchise.
“No one can pay their bills in exposure, but it really is in an industry that is so saturated musically right now. Everybody is looking for a way to break through and to get eyes and ears on them and a sync, beyond the payment, is absolutely that.”
Music integral to GTA
Music has long been integral to the GTA experience, with the franchise’s fictional radio stations introducing generations of players to an eclectic mix of genres as they cruise city streets, mow down pedestrians and outrun police.
For GTA VI, Grammy-winning French electronic duo Justice composed the score, while Rockstar plans to release an album of original songs Thursday, featuring SZA, Tame Impala and Keith Richards.
The musical celebrations will continue into the weekend with a GTA-themed concert in Miami featuring Travis Scott and Cardi B.
Gardner says video games offer a particularly powerful form of music discovery because players aren’t simply watching or listening.
“You’re an active participant in the media in a way that no other form can do.”
A still from the new Grand Theft Auto VI video game. (Rockstar Games/The Canadian Press)
Vallance is a longtime fan of the GTA series, recalling playing the original top-down game of the ’90s on a friend’s computer before becoming captivated by the leap to three-dimensional gameplay in Grand Theft Auto III.
But it was the 1980s-inspired soundtrack of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City that left the deepest musical impression, introducing him to acts such as A Flock of Seagulls and sparking an interest in the synth-pop sounds of that era.
Vallance says it’s a “huge honour” his own music has now become part of the franchise’s cultural orbit. The placement has also given the duo a moment of validation after years of navigating the uncertainties of a music career.
“Every once in a while something happens and you’re like, ‘Oh, we’re a real band.'”
GTA VI is estimated to bring in $3.25 billion to $5.2 billion in first-week sales, according to market research firm Newszoo.
Howie believes the game serves as a tastemaker at a time when audiences are increasingly fragmented across countless entertainment platforms.
“There’s not many things that tons of people do all together anymore. We used to all watch the same shows and listen to the same radio stations and read the same things,” he says.
“GTA is one of the very few things that a lot of people still come around to; that’s a unifying thing on a scale that doesn’t really exist in today’s age.”
