Justice scores GTA VI with music that shifts as you play, and new single Pusher is out now

French electronic duo Justice (Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay) composed the original score for GTA VI. Rockstar's announcement on October 29 calls it an adaptive score, meaning the music responds to how you play in Vice City and Leonida. The new single, Pusher, is a collaboration with fellow French producer Gesaffelstein and is already on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Tidal and Pandora.

The full album, Grand Theft Auto VI: Original Score, comes out December 11, 22 days after the game's November 19 launch on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Rockstar's music page lists 30 tracks, plus bonus tracks on the digital edition, and three formats: streaming, a double CD and a triple vinyl set, which also comes in a limited crystal-clear pressing. The album is a joint release from Because Music, Ed Banger (the duo's longtime label) and Rockstar Games. Preorders are open, but Rockstar's page doesn't list prices for the CD or vinyl.

How an adaptive score works

A film score is locked to the picture, so a scene sounds the same every time you watch it. A game can't know how long you'll take to leave a building or whether a getaway turns into a shootout. An adaptive score is written in sections and layers that the game mixes on the fly. It can add drums when the police show up, pull them back once you lose the cops, or move to a new passage without an audible seam.

Rockstar says Justice's pieces are dynamically tuned to the different ways players engage with the world. It hasn't said which actions change the music or whether the score plays during missions, chases or free roaming. In the announcement, de Rosnay says the game covers so much ground, geographically and thematically, that the music had to span a wide range of emotions, genres and textures, and that Rockstar gave the duo room to explore whatever they needed to.

Pusher previews the instrumental side

The album's announcement describes Pusher as the first collaboration between Justice and Gesaffelstein and a sample of the score's instrumental material. The other released single, Flower in a Hurricane, featuring Tame Impala, SZA and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, premiered with the GTA VI launch trailer, and Rockstar lists it as part of the same album.

Not the radio, and not the other album

GTA VI's music comes in three separate pieces. The radio stations play licensed songs you pick in a car or, on foot, through your character's headphones, which we covered in our look at GTA VI's radio, podcasts and album. Grand Theft Auto VI: The Album collects 34 new songs from artists including Travis Scott and Rauw Alejandro and arrives November 19 alongside the game. Justice's score is the music written to accompany the action, and it's the release that lands on December 11.