What GTA 6 will sound like: Bama on the six radio stations, the map, and the wildlife you will hear before you see

Same rule as always. If Rockstar showed it, I say so. If it's my guess, I say that too.

I don't normally write about music. My beat is the animals and the places they live. But a game world is something you hear long before you understand it, and Leonida is going to have two soundtracks running at once: the one on the dial, and the one outside the car window. I wanted to write about both.

The dial, as confirmed

Confirmed. On October 8 Rockstar previewed six Leonida radio stations, each with its own art:

• Flash FM: pop. A returning name from the 1986 Vice City, now broadcasting in the present day.
• Dirty South Classics: classic rap and hip hop.
• Cocoteo FM: bachata, dembow and reggaeton.
• Afro Bank FM: amapiano, 3-step and other African music, modern and classic.
• Back Country Radio: country.
• The Chamber 106.6: heavy metal.

Rockstar described this as a glimpse rather than a full list. There are no hosts or tracklists yet.

The sentence that matters

The most interesting line in Rockstar's announcement is not a station name. It is that some stations are tied to specific parts of the map. That is new for the series, and Rockstar has not explained it.

My guess. Real radio is local. An FM signal carries a few dozen miles before the hills and the curve of the earth take it, which is why a long drive through the South is a slow handover from one station to the next. Every GTA so far has ignored that and given you the whole dial everywhere. If Rockstar is now tying some stations to places, the likeliest version is a signal that fades in and out as you drive, so the dial itself tells you where you are.

What Red Dead taught us. Rockstar has done location-bound music before, just not on a radio. Red Dead Redemption 2 is set in 1899, so its music came from places: the piano in a saloon, a band on a riverboat, the camp singing at night. You heard the music because you were standing somewhere. Leonida sounds like Rockstar mixing that idea into the GTA dial. It is a guess, but it would suit a state Rockstar says has nearly as much land as GTA IV, GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 combined.

I am not going to guess which station belongs where. Rockstar hasn't said, and I'd rather wait than invent it.

What the trailers already played

Confirmed where the wiki marks it so; the Extended Look list comes from listeners. The songs page has the detail.

• Trailer 1 (December 2023): Tom Petty, "Love Is a Long Road".
• Trailer 2 (May 2025): the Pointer Sisters, "Hot Together". During Jason's drive the radio flicks past Wang Chung, a Haitian kompa track by Zenglen, and Tammy Wynette's "Talkin' to Myself Again". Those quick cuts are the first real sample of the dial: pop, kompa and country inside a few seconds.
• The Extended Look (August 2026): about a dozen tracks identified by listeners, from Phil Collins to The Bellamy Brothers to Chimbala and Omega.
• Launch trailer (October 2026): "Flower in a Hurricane" by Justice, with Tame Impala, SZA and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. The first trailer to lead with original music.

The seventh station

Here is where I come back to my own beat. Game Informer's September cover story, written with Rockstar's cooperation, says Leonida has more than 170 animal species, and that roughly 60 of them are birds. Edge reports that days and nights now run longer than in GTA V. Put those two facts together and you get a lot more dawn and dusk, which in a real Florida marsh is when the place is loudest.

My guess, based on the species Rockstar has actually shown:

• Alligators bellow. It is a low, rumbling call, strongest in spring, that you feel in your chest as much as hear. If Rockstar's sound team has done its homework, Grassrivers at dusk will be the best argument in the game for turning the radio off.
• Cranes are in the Grassrivers screenshots, and Florida's sandhill cranes have a rolling, rattling call that carries a long way across open marsh.
• Pelicans are over the Keys in the screenshots. Adult brown pelicans are almost silent, so if you hear one squawking, somebody at Rockstar has taken a liberty.
• Gulls on the boat rails will be loud, constantly. That one I would put money on.

None of that is confirmed. It is what those animals sound like in the places Rockstar has put them, and I'll be listening for it. Everything Rockstar has shown is on the wildlife page.

The rest of the music

Two more things, both confirmed:

• Grand Theft Auto VI: The Album: 34 original songs, announced September 17, arriving with the game on November 19, separate from the licensed music on the stations.
• The original score by Justice: an adaptive score in the game, and a 30-track album on December 11 on streaming, CD and vinyl. Eve has written about what Justice have said about it.

If you want to hear any of this properly, Rolo's guide to setting up your console audio is worth ten minutes before launch.

What I'm looking forward to

Driving north with the radio on and noticing the moment the signal starts to break up, if Rockstar has built it the way I hope. Then pulling over somewhere in Mount Kalaga, switching it off, and finding out how many of those 60 birds I can name by ear.

Every GTA 6 radio station in the wiki