Banco Santander is taking a leaf out of Simon Cowell's X Factor playbook, creating a band from young hopefuls in a contest promoted on social media platform TikTok.
The Spanish bank launched the #loudertogether initiative last July to find the best musical talent on TikTok. Santander invited musicians from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Spain, Mexico, Portugal, and Uruguay to upload a video to their personal TikTok profile, performing their own original song and tagging it with the hashtag #loudertogether. More than 3,500 videos from the seven countries were received within a few weeks.
The five selected artists have released their first song, "Dime", under the band name LoudT.
The people responsible for selecting the best talents, were Spanish artist Omar Montes, who has 1.6 million followers on TikTok, DJ Tommy Muñoz in Argentina, rapper Xama in Brazil, singer Augusto Schuster in Chile, Dulce María from the group RBD in Mexico, composer Pedro Gonçalves in Portugal, and singer-songwriter Faculto Balta in Uruguay.
The prize for the contest consisted of a trip to Barcelona, where the five young people gathered to compose a song and record a video clip together in less than a week.
They also travelled to Madrid, where they could work in the classic Metropol studios, where artists such as C Tangana, Sebastián Yatra, and Aitana have produced their albums.
A documentary about the group members’ experience during their week in Spain will soon be released on TikTok, delving into their personal life stories and the obstacles they had to overcome to create their first song.