Band Aid 30 teams up with WholeWorldBand to launch viral challenge

Dublin-based start-up WholeWorldBand has teamed up with Band Aid 30, the 2014 incarnation of the charity supergroup Band Aid, to launch an “ice-bucket challenge”-style viral video campaign.

The WholeWorldBand app, which is available for iPhone and iPad, uses the iOS device's built-in microphone and camera and can automatically create a video mix featuring the original Band Aid 30 artists plus up to five other people singing along with the official Do They Know It's Christmas music video.

The Band Aid 30 single features Bono, Coldplay's Chris Martin, One Direction, Ellie Goulding, Emeli Sandé and Ed Sheeran, among others, but now anyone can become part of the Band Aid 30 on WholeWorldBand.

Already the fastest selling download of the year, Band Aid founder Bob Geldof is hoping to expand on the single's success with the Band Aid Challenge.

Bono’s line

Band Aid 30 is asking people to sing U2 frontman Bono’s line “Tonight we’re reaching out and touching you” and then nominate three friends to do likewise on social media.

Each new video mix can then be shared to YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and the creator can nominate their friends to do the same.

For every singer participating €1.79 will be collected for the Band Aid 30 appeal to aid in the fight against Ebola in west Africa.

"The concept of Band Aid is fantastic (because it's) raising money for charity and helping people less fortunate than ourselves," said WholeWorldBand chief executive, John Holland. "Particularly at Christmas time, a time of thinking of others and their needs."

He said the WholeWorldBand app is an online audiovisual recording studio that allows people to collaborate in audio and video. “So it was a perfect tool to allow people to participate in the Band Aid campaign and add their singing, dancing, clapping or playing drums.”

To record a music video with Bob Geldof, WholeWorldBand users are charged €1.79 for each recording session, and according to Holland 100 per cent of the fee will go towards fighting the Ebola crisis in west Africa, the chosen cause of this iteration of the Do They Know It's Christmas single.

The app splices recorded video clips together into the music video proper, with the audio in sync within two milliseconds and the video within one frame, Holland said.

Although only iPhone and iPad versions are available now, Holland and his team plan to release Android and web versions of the app by early 2015.