Amazon Selling Music on Grand Theft Auto IV

Here's an interesting twist on music marketing: Gamers who play the new Grand Theft Auto IV will be able to easily (well, sort of easily) buy downloads of the music they hear through Amazon.com.

Although, it seems like a pretty weird, convoluted set-up. Here's the "how it works" description from Amazon:

When playing Grand Theft Auto IV, players can listen to over 200 songs across 16 in-game radio stations. A new GTA IV feature called ZIT lets customers 'tag' the songs they like. When a player hears a song that interests them, they can dial ZIT-555-0100 on their in-game cell phone, and a text message appears on the phone with the song title and artist. The ZIT number is recorded on the phone for easy one-key lookups of future songs.

After playing, gamers can log on to the new online Rockstar Games Social Club community site at https://socialclub.rockstargames.com/, where they can see their stats from their game play and the full list of songs they've tagged. The site will offer a link to a customized playlist of these songs on Amazon MP3, where they can preview, purchase and download the songs as 256 kbps MP3 files.

Seems like a great idea to set up a way to sell the music in a game -- but why this whole weird thing with the in-game cell phone?

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