British band live streams epic London treasure hunt with cash prize

 By 
Sam Haysom
 on 
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

LONDON -- It doesn't matter how old you are; everyone loves a treasure hunt.

London-based band MOONES are obviously well aware of this. In a bid to promote their new album, "Modern Music Moguls," they're using their £4,000 ($5,966) music video budget as the prize in a live-streamed mystery treasure hunt.

Okay, so here's how it works: MOONES have set up a camera somewhere in central London that's live streaming on YouTube. The camera is pointing at an anonymous brick wall beneath a grimy looking window. There's a piece of chewing gum stuck to the wall, and -- according to the description MOONES have put beneath the video feed -- there's a secret code beneath the gum. The first person to find the location and tweet the code at the band will win the £4,000.

Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Sounds simple enough, but how the hell do you find a random brick wall in a heavily built-up city centre?

Well, this is where the twist comes in. If you look at the screengrab above, which was taken at around 9:00 a.m. Friday, you'll see that it's slightly more zoomed out than the shot at the top of the page (which was taken a couple of hours earlier).

That's because every time the video view count doubles, the camera zooms further out, gradually revealing more and more of the location.

We've hit 5k views overnight! Get ready for the first zoom out. https://t.co/0QBcFqsztw #ZOOMES— Moones (@moones) December 18, 2015

At the time of writing, the view count is creeping up towards the 7,000 mark. There's a live chat on YouTube, but it doesn't look as though anyone is close to cracking the location yet.

GO!

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