NEW YORK — Most of the time when you hear a Bon Jovi song in a store, it’s playing over a loudspeaker. But Thursday night, around 100 lucky fans saw the group’s lead singer and namesake perform a bunch of his hits during an intimate acoustic set inside a Kenneth Cole store in Soho.

The performance, as New York Fashion Week began, was part of Common Thread, an initiative Jon Bon Jovi started with Cole that provides a platform for the new designers and musicians.

“Despite all the social media and the ability for people to have a voice, it’s so hard for them to find an audience for that voice,” Cole told The Associated Press on Thursday. “So tonight is kind of the two of them coming together, and that’s what the common thread.”

Before the show, the 52-year old New Jersey-born rocker expressed his feeling that while the technology for making music has gotten simpler, he sees no substitute for raw performance as the true measure of talent.

“You can have all the bells and whistles of production these days, and these guys that are out there singing on the Grammys with auto-tune,” Bon Jovi said. “I always used to say, ‘I’m going to hand you my guitar, sing me something, and I want to see you play it.’ This is that night.”

The singer opened with “Who Says You Can’t Go Home,” and included his megahits Livin’ On A Prayer,” and ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.” Other performers included up-and-comer Cole Redding, country artist Rodney Atkins and singer-songwriter, Rose Falcon.