GTA 6 Trailer Sparks Massive Spotify Boost for Tom Petty’s Love Is a Long Road

Not only is the GTA 6 trailer breaking records on YouTube, but it's even boosted the popularity of the song Rockstar used for it.

The GTA 6 trailer uses Tom Petty’s Love is a Long Road, taken from the late rocker's 1989 album Full Moon River.

Spotify said streams of Love is a Long Road have skyrocketed following the release of the GTA 6 trailer, by a whopping 36,979% compared to this time last week. At the time of this article’s publication, Love is a Long Road is on 11.3 million plays on Spotify. This is a number that will no doubt continue to rise as we near GTA 6's planned 2025 launch.

This week, IGN reported on how GTA 6 fans are already spinning story theories out of the Tom Petty song in the trailer. The song’s opening lyrics include the lines: “There was a girl I knew, she said she cared about me, she tried to make my world, the way she thought it should be.” GTA 6’s protagonist is Lucia, a character we know little about and the series’ first female lead in quite some time.

Tom loved contributing “Runnin’ Down A Dream” to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, so it is an honor to have “Love Is A Long Road” featured in Trailer 1 for Grand Theft Auto VI from @RockstarGames. #PettyForever https://t.co/PAFg83VInd— Tom Petty (@tompetty) December 5, 2023

The GTA 6 trailer was awaited with bated breath from the gaming industry and finally arrived with plenty of classic Rockstar satire. The 90-second trailer featured a ton of intricate details (here are 99 things IGN spotted) and plenty of references to wild and wacky real life events too. It also showed off GTA 6's dual protagonists, Jason and Lucia, and the internet has already grown obsessed over the latter.

While the game was revealed alongside a 2025 release date for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, PC players were left frustrated, though not necessarily surprised, that their platform was left off the list.

Image credit: Andrew Chin/Getty Images for ABA

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.