EMERYVILLE, Calif. – January 18, 2010 – High-speed file transfer expert Aspera recently enabled (RED)™, Starbucks, BBDO New York, and leading video streaming agency Streaming Tank to collaborate with hundreds of artists from around the world for a simultaneous live-stream performance of the legendary Beatles hit “All You Need Is Love.” The event set a new Guinness Book of World Records™ record for "Most Nations in an Online Sing Along". 

This first-of-its-kind global event used Aspera’s transfer technology to gather performances from all over the world as digital file uploads, and eventually stream the results on www.StarbucksLoveProject.com. To participate in the StartbucksLoveProject sing along, anyone with access to a computer and video camera had the opportunity to record a personal rendition of “All You Need Is Love” and upload it using Aspera On-Demand for Amazon Web Services elastic computing cloud. A team of editors created the ultimate composite video sing along of the famous Beatles song for the world to see and hear. For every video submitted to the site, Starbucks made a contribution to the Global Fund, a charity dedicated to preventing and treating AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.  

Aspera provided the technology to upload content from 156 countries using its Aspera On-Demand offering for Amazon Web Services (AWS). Streaming Tank was then able to access all content from these countries directly from the AWS cloud using Aspera software. A team of video editors in London selected the best clips to create a final rendition of the famous tune that can be streamed from the www.StarbucksLoveProject.com website. The project was conceived by BBDO New York and produced by Gorgeous Enterprises and Tool of North America.

Thousands of digital media files comprising many gigabytes were uploaded from virtually every corner of the globe, requiring inexpensive global bandwidth capacity on demand and a fast file transfer technology capable of performing over varied and difficult networks. James Wilkinson, co-founder of Streaming Tank Group, said, “The service worked spectacularly well in getting the content from some of the world’s most remote locations.” 

“The event represents a truly global contribution from all ends of the earth,” explained Michelle Munson, president and co-founder of Aspera. “We’re thrilled our technology has brought people with varying levels of internet connectivity together for such a worthy cause. Conventional file transfer technologies simply would not have worked under the extreme network conditions faced in many regions.”

Upload bandwidths ranged from 22 Kbps to multiple Mbps and were often impaired by network latency and packet loss. Without the Aspera file transfer technology, capable of withstanding these conditions and the on-demand bandwidth and computing platform of AWS, the event may not have been possible.

To view a replay of the live event, go to http://www.starbucksloveproject.com/