Check out DJ and Producer Avicii’s attempt at creating a global crowdsourced hit

Earlier this year we reported that Ericsson was teaming up with DJ and producer Avicii to create a crowdsourced hit song.

Things kicked off with a call-to-action for Avicii’s fans and fellow producers to contribute their own sounds from across the world, with segments submitted online and Avicii acting as executive producer, curating content like the bassline, effects, melody, rhythms, and vocals.

Well, that track is now available, with Avicii trawling through 13,000 submissions from 140 countries to create ‘X You’ from 4,199 producers.

The collaboration was in partnership with Ericsson, At Night Management, and Universal Music Sweden, and was designed to show how a networked society enables innovation and business transformation.

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Avicii selected weekly semi-finalists, with fans voting for the final sounds and beats which he used to create the final track which premiered at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. Ericsson President and CEO Hans Vestberg said:

“I am excited to see the possibilities and the creativity come alive into one song crafted by Avicii and all the fans. It starts a flow of thinking for all industries to re-invent the way they collaborate across time and borders. Music is one of the first industries being transformed by networking, collaboration and new technologies. We now see TV, publishing and the whole entertainment industry going down the same path.”

Ericsson launched the latest in its Networked Society short film series back in October, focusing on the future of learning. The film taps some of the leading minds in education and technology, and the 20-minute video is well worth a watch just to give you a snapshot of where we’re currently at in education, and where we’re going.

This followed on from the Swedish telecommunications giant’s previous short film, Thinking cities: The challenges of urbanization in a networked society, which explored the challenges and opportunities of urbanization in a connected world.

This latest Ericsson project isn’t the first attempt at creating a hit song via the gift of crowdsourcing. Indeed, just last year the Reddit community came up with Reddit Top of the Pops, a subreddit constituting a collection of threads aimed at getting a pop song to the top of charts. It didn’t succeed.

It still remains to be seen whether Avicii’s effort will become a hit or not, these kinds of things can’t really be controlled as it’s entirely up to the music-loving public to decide. It will be distributed on digital platforms such as Spotify, iTunes and VEVO, with all proceeds to be donated to charity.

Feature Image Credit – Thinkstock