Crowdsourcing Contest Leads to a Global Soccer Anthem

Published Jan-05-15

Breakthrough:
An international crowdsourcing project finds a theme song for the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

Company:
Sony Corporation, Japan

The Story:

Disruptive innovations have fundamentally changed the way music is bought, packaged, sold and consumed in recent years. One of the big transformations that is taking place right now, thanks to the internet and digital technologies is how unknowns and jobbing musicians are able to gain the attention of the mainstream.

There are a number of ways this is being made possible, including open innovation competitions, crowdfunding and online collaborative tools. Then there is the access to a global audience that the internet and social media channels provide.

SuperSong Contest

One of the most high profile crowdsourced music competitions of 2014 coincided with the FIFA World Cup, arguably the biggest sporting competition in the world. The global event takes place every four years and features 32 national sides in a knockout tournament that lasts for nearly a month.

Each World Cup adopts theme and official songs and many participating countries and sponsor organisations organize their own musical tributes. To celebrate the 2014 competition, which was played in Brazil, the Sony Corporation created a crowdourced single contest. Inspiring songwriters and musicians from all over the world were invited to write original songs and submit them to the contest's digital platforms. The campaign was part of Sony's umbrella, 'One World' initiative.

The many submissions were assessed by a judging panel that included Grammy winning superstar Ricky Martin who would record the winning entry. The singer commented “It is a true honor to be able to collaborate with ‘SuperSong’. “I am extremely happy and humbled that I was asked to launch this special contest where fans have an opportunity to co-write the final version of the song with me.”

There were three principle judging criteria: music quality, lyric quality and relevance to the World Cup competition.

Winner Selected

After a lengthy judging process, the eventual winner was Elijah King from the United States. He won for his original bilingual English and Spanish song called 'Vida' (Sample lyrics: La vida buena, Buena vida, Everyone across the world, Man, and woman, boy and girl).

As part of his prize, King collaborated with Ricky Martin on the final version of the song which was included in the official FIFA World Cup album, ‘One Love, One Rhythm’. He also won two VIP guest tickets to the final match of the soccer fest and the closing ceremony.

Crowdsourcing Success Story

The album went on to reach the top ten chart position in several countries, while the video to 'Vida' has racked up more than 38 million views on YouTube at the time of writing this article.

Not only has King raised his profile, but he also collects a share of the royalties.

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