Neil Finn on why he live streamed his new album

Neil Finn is live streaming the recording of his new album Out of Silence

Last night Neil Finn live streamed the final recording session for his new album Out of Silence to a worldwide global audience.

Every Friday for the past month Finn has invited fans into the recording process, turning the making of the album into a series of mini-live gigs complete with themes and surprise guest stars, including hip-hop heroes SWIDT, a 20-piece orchestra and his brother Tim.

Previous streams have had over 300,000 fans joining Finn by live streaming the event.

Speaking to Jack Tame on Newstalk ZB this morning Finn revealed his thinking behind the unusual idea.

"The final undertaking was to try and record an album in three or four hours which was a highly arranged sophisticated piece of work," he said.

Finn explained how the songs were written two or three years ago, with the majority sketched out in a single evening at his piano.

The album's first single Second Nature was recorded in a live session two weeks ago and released the following Monday. Herald entertainment writer Karl Puschmann attended that session and wrote about the experience in his column last week.

With last nights session concluding the recording process Finn says the album will be out this Friday. It's an incredibly fast pace, but Finn admits that behnd the easy going live recording sessions are lots of practice, preparation and managing logistics.

He's incredibly happy with how it's gone out saying that getting here has been a long journey.

"I've been interested in live streaming for a long time," he says. "I did my first in 2001 from my studio at home."

Finn also admits he purposefully cloaked the sessions in secrecy, not letting details like who was performing with him slip.

"It's part of my nature to want to create a few surprises and be a bit deceptive and subversive," he explained.

"And to make things a little more than what somebody might have expected."

For the full interview visit Newstalk ZB's website.