Lyft Opens A Recording Studio For Drivers In Atlanta
Local musicians, left to right, IQ, Shawn Don and Nor record music in Lyft’s new studio. IQ and Nor make up the group KIN4LIFE.
Emilia Brock / WABE
Lyft is giving Atlanta drivers a way to pursue their musical ambitions for free.
The rideshare company unveiled The Amped Studio, which is a recording booth just for Lyft drivers. The mini-studio, inside Lyft’s local hub, launched in June with live performances from Atlanta rapper Yung Joc and Lyft’s musical drivers.
“Atlanta has an awesome music heritage and we have a lot of musicians in our driver community. And we thought, ‘What if we brought that in-house?’ And that was the genesis of the idea,” Sam Bond, general manager for Lyft in the southeast, told WABE producer Emilia Brock on “Closer Look.”
The initiative was inspired by a Detroit Lyft team that rented out studio time to their drivers, according to Bond. He said the first of its kind studio was created to support local drivers’ passions.
Nor, a Lyft driver and member of the female hip-hop duo KIN4LIFE, recorded in the booth on launch day and described the space as feeling “homey.”
“They threw on a Prince instrumental, and so we were in there making up songs from scratch. And it was fun,” Nor said. “The sound was nice. It was very warm and, it felt like a studio that I have been to in my life. It didn’t feel uncomfortable or foreign.”
Already, more than 20 sessions have been recorded in the space and reservations are filling up quickly for studio time, according to Bond. He said the success of the Atlanta studio has caught the eye of other Lyft hubs.
“I think you are going to see an expansion of this kind of offering, even if it doesn’t look exactly like what we did,” he said.
Bond said more is to come for Atlanta’s Lyft studio space, as well.
“We see this as a first step. We knew there would be interest. We didn’t know how much. So the initial response has certainly got us back to the drawing board on not only is this space the only space that we use or consider…,” he said. “…At least as far as the initial take, this is what we’ve landed on.”
Note: This interview originally aired on WABE’s “Closer Look with Rose Scott” in a segment produced by Emilia Brock.
Correction: Yung Joc’s name has been corrected from an earlier version of this story.
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