Google Artist Hub

With Google Music is open for business, the search giant looks increasingly like Apple.  What I like most about what they’re doing, however, is the Artist Hub.

Here’s Google describing what artists can do:

Whether you’re on a label or the do-it-yourself variety, artists are at the heart of Google Music. With the Google Music artist hub, any artist who has all the necessary rights can distribute his or her own music on our platform, and use the artist hub interface to build an artist page, upload original tracks, set prices and sell content directly to fans - essentially becoming the manager of their own far-reaching music store. This goes for new artists as well as established independent artists, like Tiesto, who debuts a new single on Google Music today.

 Now, here are those artists speaking up for themselves:

At one point, all famous musicians had a start. Maybe they had the fortune of instant success. Most likely, they struggled in anonymity for years and scrambled just to make ends meet. Perhaps driving their own van and getting food from a soup kitchen defined life for many more of them than we know. Very likely, too, there are many, many of such musicians now aspiring to make it and living day-to-day with their basic needs.

Well, going with Google should hold them in very good stead, then. From a purely market reach standpoint, Google is obviously dominant. We can never know for sure how these up-and-coming talent will do, but I’m happy they have a superb platform from which to realize that talent. 

Note: I wrote this article on November 17th 2011 for an old Media & Tech blog.