Mos Def Sells Album Through T-Shirts

In an attempt to move beyond the norm, rapper Mos Def is selling his album through more modern means. He's selling them through t-shirts. Ok... what this means is instead of getting a cd like we normally do nowdays, fans will get a t-shirt with the cover art on the front of it and a track list on the back.

No, the shirt does not come with a cd, but it will feature a code for each fan to use in order to go online and be able to download the album off the i-net for free. The concept may just work for Mos Def's sales, which are presently approaching 40,000 units of The Ecstatic.

More amazing, the folks over at Nielsen Soundscan will be counting the t-shirt sales as actual album sales. "It's taking an album and turning it into a t-shirt," designer Jeremy Wineberg, president of Invisible DJ told Digital Music News this week. "Each shirt comes with a digital download tag carrying a unique code and is manufactured by clothing company LnA."How else does it help to have an artist make his album available through a site like lnaclothing.com?

"You're bypassing the middleman, like iTunes," Wineberg added. According to Wineberg, fans will start seeing this t-shirt sometime in July.