Iggy crowdsources the music
Eight passengers. Iggy Pop is busy boosting high-speed Internet in New Zealand. The veteran rocker was recruited by Orcon Broadband to stand front and center of a crowdsourcing campaign giving musicians the opportunity to record his track The Passenger.
But a large part of this venture has been pretty domestic to date as more than 200 Kiwis had to audition from their own homes – under the online direction of Iggy. The Iggy Pop Together Incredible event, organised by agency Special, was orchestrated via a Facebook app that allowed musicians to upload their The Passenger routines, with the artist doing video call-outs.
The brand band of eight finalists assembles today in Auckland to lay down a new version of the track together with Iggy (from his studio in Miami). That performance – which can be viewed live on Facebook – will be turned into a TV spot, slated to debut in mid-November.
“Iggy obviously has huge pulling power in the global music community,” says Orcon CEO Scott Bartlett. “We were expecting around 50 New Zealand musos to audition but in the end we had more than 200. It was a pretty tough job screening them down to eight but with Iggy’s help I think we have unearthed some awesome talent.”
The Iggy Pop Together Incredible auditions were viewed online more than 65,000 times on Facebook, and the site attracted close to 4,000 fans.
