For four nights, T-Mobile & Google Music hosted me as a guest at their T-Mobile Presents Google Music party at the pop-up TAO nightclub during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. The event boasted tons of celebs that partied hard until 5am every morning, so yeah, there was a lot of fun to be had. But the real story here is the indie acts that performed early in the evening each night.
Google Music handpicked independent artists from across the country, representing various genres to showcase their brand of music to a packed house of attendees. Most of these artists will be the faces of Google Music, and will be partnering with this new service to further push their their product through Google’s monstrous platform.
If you’re unfamiliar with Google Music, it’s Google’s latest venture, which seeks to help indie artists push their music to a larger audience. And with Google’s massive reach, it’s sure to be a success and a game-changing service. I sat down with Google Music’s director Jamie Rosenberg, and he explained to me how the program works. Basically it’s striving to be a better version of iTunes. Independent artists can release and sell their music through Google and set their own price points. You want to sell your album for $5? That’s cool, but you could also charge $50 if you were so inclined. You can even offer up your music for free. It’s extremely artist friendly–something that’s missing in this day and age.
The service had a soft launch in September, but Sundance was its true coming out party. If you have an android phone (preferably a T-Mobile. Ha!), you can download and upload the music directly from your phone, so these two brands partnering makes all of the sense in the world.
Keeping things in the indie spirit, T-Mobile and Google Music enlisted some serious talent to kick off their partnership. On the hip-hop front, the bubbling Alabama duo of ST and Clova, b.k.a. G-Side, brought their southern fried funk to the stage. While Nashville representer Chancellor Warhol was incredibly well received with his upbeat electro-based rap.
I spoke with both Chance and G-Side, and Chance mentioned that he was “thrilled” to be working with Google Music. “The possibilities are endless,” he told me. The program is also to include the very dope Boston-based band, Bad Rabbits and the popular Civil Wars.
While Sundance is known for its film festival, it’s clear that there’s been a slight shift to music as a main focus during their week run. While other parties boasted big name acts like Drake, Wiz Khalifa, Nas and Ludacris, T-Mobile & Google stayed true to the rising the star—giving relatively unknown acts their “big break.”
For many of the artists featured FSD (or heck, any aspiring artists), who are independent and hungry, Google Music is definitely worth looking into to showcase your music. Learn more here.