Spotify billboards with GTA 6 art appeared in US cities, TechRadar reports; no tie-up confirmed

TechRadar reported on September 18 that Spotify billboards featuring GTA 6 artwork and the Spotify logo had appeared in major US cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Miami. TechRadar said Spotify had not explained them, and its report carried no comment from Rockstar.

According to TechRadar, the billboards started appearing earlier that week. It tied the timing to Rockstar's announcement of Grand Theft Auto 6: The Album, a limited-edition vinyl release that TechRadar said had already sold out.

TechRadar wrote that Spotify "has yet to tell us" what it and Rockstar have planned, and called the billboards ambiguous. All it had to go on were the billboards themselves, which showed the game's artwork next to the streaming service's logo.

TechRadar pointed to the run-up to the album. Before the tracklist was shown, artists including Travis Scott, PinkPantheress, Future and Morgan Wallen shared GTA 6 artwork on social media to tease their songs. Some fans read the Spotify billboards as the next step in that rollout.

The outlet listed what fans were guessing. Some Reddit users thought the billboards simply extended the soundtrack push, with the album's original songs arriving on Spotify. Others thought Spotify could offer playlists based on the game's radio stations. A third group hoped for direct Spotify support in the game, so players could stream their own playlists instead of the radio. TechRadar's writer said in the headline they hoped for that, but noted wide skepticism, since many players see the curated stations as central to the series. These were fan theories, and neither company confirmed any of them.

GTA 6 was set to launch on November 19. As of September 18, the only thing established was that the billboards existed.