Rockstar has named Justice as GTA 6's original score composers, credited on its own launch trailer page and in its announcement post. It is the first composer credit in the game's three year public life, and it is worth measuring against what the studio has done before, because the choice is genuinely unusual.
Before the comparison, one thing has to be nailed down, because a lot of coverage got it wrong.
Score is not radio, and this credit is not the soundtrack
Several outlets wrote that Justice are "behind the soundtrack," which readers reasonably took to mean they built the radio. They did not.
Three separate things, kept separate:
- The original score is the interactive, non-radio layer: the music that responds to what is happening in a mission. Justice composed this.
- "Flower in a Hurricane", the track that debuted with the launch trailer, featuring Tame Impala, SZA, and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, is a song, not score. It also joins GTA 6: The Album, a standalone record of 34 original tracks.
- In-game radio remains entirely unannounced in its final form. No total station count, no official tracklist, no self radio or custom music option. Six stations have been previewed; Rockstar's own copy indicates the dial is larger than that.
Naming a composer tells you who wrote it, not how it works. Rockstar has still never described how GTA 6's dynamic score behaves in play, which is covered in our dynamic score explainer.
The lineage, game by game
| Game | Year | Score credit |
|---|---|---|
| GTA IV | 2008 | Michael Hunter |
| Red Dead Redemption | 2010 | Bill Elm and Woody Jackson |
| L.A. Noire | 2011 | Andrew Hale and Simon Hale |
| Max Payne 3 | 2012 | HEALTH |
| GTA V | 2013 | Tangerine Dream, Woody Jackson, The Alchemist, Oh No |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | 2018 | Woody Jackson, with Daniel Lanois producing vocal songs |
| GTA VI | 2026 | Justice |
Read down that column and a pattern emerges, then breaks.
The early era is a house composer. Michael Hunter wrote GTA IV's score and had been inside Rockstar's orbit for years. Red Dead Redemption brought in Bill Elm and Woody Jackson, and Jackson then became the studio's closest thing to a permanent musical identity, carrying through GTA V and RDR2 across eight years.
The exceptions are deliberate genre casting. Max Payne 3 hired HEALTH, a Los Angeles noise rock band, because the game needed something abrasive and modern rather than orchestral. L.A. Noire hired Andrew and Simon Hale for jazz literacy. Those are the two precedents that actually matter for GTA 6.
GTA V is the committee model. Four credited acts, with Tangerine Dream's Edgar Froese supplying the synth spine, Woody Jackson the continuity, and The Alchemist and Oh No the hip hop production sensibility. That approach produced a score that could shift register between three protagonists.
Where Justice fits, and where they do not
Justice are Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay, a Paris duo formed in 2003 who came up on Ed Banger. Four studio albums: Cross (2007), Audio, Video, Disco (2011), Woman (2016) and Hyperdrama (2024) after a seven year gap. They won a Grammy in 2009 for their remix of MGMT's "Electric Feel," and "Neverender," their collaboration with Tame Impala, won Best Electronic/Dance Recording at the 67th Grammys. That last detail is worth noting: the Tame Impala pairing on the GTA 6 track is a return, not a new introduction.
Their sound is compressed, distorted analogue synth bass in cut up phrases over disco and funk skeletons, built with rock and metal production habits. Loud, physical, maximalist.
Here is the structural point. There is no published record of Justice scoring a game before GTA 6. Their existing film work is their own concert films, A Cross the Universe and IRIS: A Space Opera by Justice. Say "no published record of a game score before GTA 6" rather than "first ever composer work," because the distinction matters.
So Rockstar has gone further from its house composer than at any point since Max Payne 3, and arguably further than that, since HEALTH at least had scoring intent in their DNA. This is a band hired for an aesthetic.
Why the choice makes sense anyway
Two arguments, both grounded in confirmed facts.
The setting argues for it. Leonida is a modern Florida analog centred on Vice City. The series' Vice City identity has always been synthesiser led, and Justice are a synthesiser act whose entire catalogue is built on analogue bass and disco architecture. That is closer to a natural fit than Woody Jackson's Americana would have been. Our soundtrack overview tracks what has been identified so far.
The structure argues for it too. GTA 6 has two protagonists, not three, which removes the problem GTA V's four composer committee was partly solving. A single coherent musical identity is viable in a way it was not in 2013. Our comparison of why two protagonists rather than more covers the design logic.
The open risk is the obvious one. Score work demands restraint and fragmentation: short cues, variable intensity, music that gets out of the way. Justice's catalogue is the opposite of restrained. Whether that translates is the single most interesting unanswered musical question about the game, and Rockstar has said nothing about how the score behaves.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Justice make GTA 6's radio stations?
No. Justice composed the original score, which is the interactive non-radio layer. Radio and score are separate, and no radio station lineup, total count or tracklist has been announced.
Is Woody Jackson involved in GTA 6?
Rockstar has named only Justice as original score composers. No other composer credit has been announced, and Woody Jackson's involvement was always a guess rather than a report.
How many songs are on GTA 6: The Album?
Rockstar has announced 34 original tracks. Nine have been named publicly so far, including the Justice track. That is not an official tracklist.
Has Rockstar explained how the dynamic score works?
No. The behaviour of the score in play has never been described. Rockstar promised more detail on the dynamic score and on in-game radio as separate future reveals.
The Bottom Line
Rockstar's score history runs from a house composer to a small permanent identity in Woody Jackson, with occasional genre casting when a game needed something the house could not supply. GTA 6 is the furthest departure yet: a maximalist French electronic duo with no published game score credit, hired for a synthesiser led Florida. On paper the setting fit is excellent and the two protagonist structure makes a single voice workable. What nobody can assess yet is the thing that actually matters, which is whether music built to dominate a room can learn to sit underneath a mission. Rockstar has not described the score's behaviour, and until it does, the credit is a promising signal rather than an answer.