Facebook Fundraiser Crowdsources Music By Maroon 5

 

“Tune up. Drop in. RSVP now, and take your place in rock history.”

That’s the promotional slogan for an event that Coca-Cola is preparing with rock band Maroon 5 to raise money for the RAIN Foundation.
This Tuesday at noon eastern standard time, “Maroon 5 24-hour Session” will tear down the walls of the recording studio to grant full access to all fans who RSVP to the event via Facebook. This can be done through Coca-Cola’s Facebook event page, or straight on the brand’s website.
Coca-Cola’s Facebook page has over 20 million fans, and as of this writing about 3,000 have signed up for the event. It will allow fans to Tweet and send Facebook messages during every step of the songwriting process, from adding words to the lyrics to contributing to the tune itself — and that’s how the band defines crowdsourcing, incidentally.
The result: one brand new Maroon 5 song available for download at no cost. The first 100,000 downloads will prompt Coca-Cola to match each download with a charitable donation (presumably 99 cents apiece) to the RAIN Foundation. It’s “an international network with the aim to increase access to water for vulnerable sections of society in developing countries — women and children in particular — by collecting and storing rain water.”
The assumption, of course, is that 100,000 people will download the song. The Facebook event so far has about 3,000 signed up, so it will be interesting to see if this experiment truly goes viral, or if the song itself can gain notoriety once it’s composed. Using Facebook as a vehicle to engage with a young crowd and help build momentum for the event seems to be an appropriate marketing approach.
While the 24-hour jam session certainly has the potential to become messy (I can imagine that crafting a song among five people is already complicated… imagine thousands!), it seems like a great opportunity for Coca-Cola to leverage its brand, while for Maroon 5 it provides an innovative way to engage with fans.
According to Coca-Cola, “no band has ever tried to crowd source a song with their fans in just 24hrs.” Maroon 5 is set to “crowd source” another new song this March 22nd. Below this post you’ll find a video message from frontman Adam Lavine.
What do you think about this fundraising effort?