If liner notes still existed, Lyft might appear in some.
The ridesharing company has opened a recording studio for its metro Atlanta drivers inside its main office off Howell Mill Road.
“There’s a lot of artists within the driver community,” Sam Bond, general manager of Lyft in the southeast, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday.
Someone on their team was thinking up ideas of how to best help drivers and heard about Lyft in Detroit renting out studio time for its drivers. The southeast team thought to do one better.
This is the first dedicated Lyft recording studio anywhere in the country.
It’s pretty barebones: An installed microphone and an iPad in a soundproof room.
The studio is free for drivers to use, and so far, about 20 of them have done so.
Bond said they reached out to drivers to see who’d want to perform at the launch party in late June. They got more than 100 demos.
“The quality of those is really incredible,” he said, noting that most were from hip-hop and rap artists.
At the launch party, a few drivers performed with Yung Joc, the Atlanta rapper behind June 2006’s absolute banger “It’s Goin’ Down.”
Bond ensured that all of the artists own their music. This is for artists who “in many cases need a shot,” he said.
Other Lyft hubs in the country are looking into the model.
“We don’t see this ending on the ground here in Atlanta,” Bond said.