Last weekend Atlantic Records UK artist Ed Sheeran partnered with Vyclone to create an official crowd-sourced live video for his song ‘Give Me Love’. The video is made up of two parts – a live video from Sheeran’s recent shows and fans performing elements of the song themselves.
Fans who purchased tickets for one of the five shows were sent a mailer before the gig highlighting the details of the campaign and prompting them to get involved by download the Vyclone iPhone app in advance of the gig – thereby acting as a film crew for Sheeran’s performance of the song.
Vyclone also introduced some new features specifically for this campaign: extending the movie recording time length; supporting HD recording; and allowing videos to be filmed by an unlimited amount of members (rather than the previous cap of four). Also, to ensure fans could easily find the singer’s Vyclone account, Sheeran was a promoted user on Vyclone when users look at the suggested friends tab.
David King Lassman (CEO and co-founder of Vyclone) said,
“The new features available in this version of Vyclone will enable fans to share their collaborative experience with thousands of other fans in attendance at Ed’s shows to create a truly unique crowd-sourced music video, unlike anything that has ever been filmed.”
For the Sunday 14th October show in London, 96 fans participated in filming the song simultaneously via the Vyclone app – surpassing Vyclone’s previous record of 37 people ‘Vycloning’ at once. Over 700 videos have been created from the first four dates, with the aim to reach 1000 videos in total by then end of the week. While the numbers might seem small, considering the capacity of the Hammersmith Apollo is over 5k, it must be noted that the app is currently iPhone-only and must be installed to use. With Sheeran’s fans typically being a younger demographic it is safe to assume that there were a large number with BlackBerry or Android devices who could not participate.
Fans that were unable to attend the gig were asked to submit videos of them writing, singing or performing the lyrics of ‘Give Me Love’ using the Vyclone app. By doing this, the initiative opened itself up to Sheeran’s global fanbase rather than just limiting it to gig attendees. These submissions combined with the live footage will form the official lyric video for ‘Give Me Love’.
Any fan that has their footage used in the final video will be credited on Sheeran’s official website as well as the video itself. Additional terms and conditions have been created by the Atlantic legal team on top of Vyclone’s standard requirements to ensure fans are aware that their footage may be used. Fans were also prompted to share their recorded footage on their Facebook and Twitter accounts. Atlantic will then upload the final video, once it has all been compiled, to YouTube.
The label is also looking to roll out a similar campaign for Sheeran’s forthcoming European tour based on the success of the initiative in the UK.
Nikke Osterback, digital campaign manager at Atlantic Records UK gave us his thoughts around the whole campaign. He said,
“Vyclone’s technology brings a more social layer to filming a show, which is great for fan engagement. For us, however, it’s important to reach Ed’s global fanbase beyond these five dates. That’s the reason we’re taking this a step further and asking those who couldn’t attend the shows to submit their own footage, to be used in the ultimate ‘Give Me Love’ fan video. Once we’ve pulled it all together we’ll have a YouTube launch to share it back with Ed’s fans, who ultimately helped to make it.”
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…