Found via @mattstevensloop on twitter – “New Mos Def album to be embedded in a T-Shirt“ (link to NME news pages).
“Each shirt has a hang-tag printed with a URL and a unique code allowing the purchaser to download the music from the album.“
So c’mon, other possible ways of releasing an album? Let’s brainstorm!
Tags: creativity, digital, mos def, music
We never had time, but before the Big Gig @quitexander and @aliteralgirl were planning to put albums on USB sticks and sew small felt finger puppets around them, possibly with my face stuck on.
Luckily we ran out of time before that happened, and the idea was shelved along with “knickets” (knitted gig tickets sold on Etsy
.
I’d SO buy a MicroSD Ben Walker fingerpuppet
Good call 
The hang tag on the shirt seems like a cop-out, and kind of cheap. If the code was silk-screened on the shirt, now THAT would be cool (Instructions: “Be sure to claim code before wearing shirt in public”).
indeed, or even a chip in the shirt, or a scannable QR code on it… loads of ways of it actually being in the shirt rather than on the tag attached to it.
OK, so I’ve been brainstorming some ways that music could be released and having a ball coming up with crazy ideas.
For some reason I’m really drawn to ways that involve consumables that are meant to be used up: for example, a download code branded into a bread roll, or inside a fortune cookie, or inside a bottle of beer (waterproof MicroSD?) . Or ways that really make the fans engage and work for their music: An internet scavenger hunt, with each song at a secret URL that contains a clue to the next. Or a real live scavenger hunt, with an open WiFi network at the end that hosts the music download. This could be federated out to different cities, so that there is a different experience in each location.
Or you could release your music one song at a time, recorded onto sound chips on greeting cards.
Or on a USB lighter (http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/aacd/).
I think the key, though, is to come up with a way that ties in with the theme of the album/music/musician/act, a delivery method that enhances the experience. I don’t know much about Mos Def, but I doubt that a t-shirt has any more relevance to his act than for any other musician. In that way, it’s little more than a gimmick. The internet scavenger hunt probably wouldn’t work for him either. But it could work very well for somebody like Jonathan Coulton.