So a combination of the CD thread and the recent Indelicates album has got me thinking about the way music is released and whether off the beaten track methods of releasing album/singles etc have been any good or not.

In terms of the Indelicates, they released Diseases of England to pre-orderers in three parts. I can see the idea behind it but for me it just meant that I never really listened to it as it was never the "full album" so I initially felt it had back fired. However when I got the last CD and saw the box to stick all the discs in and the fact that the CD spines matched up to spell the album title I was a bit more enamoured with concept.

So what else has been done? Well Ash did that thing where they released a single every couple of weeks. It was a great gimmick for a couple of months but then I got tired of the drib drab of new songs. Plus them not being in a cohesive album has meant that while there's a few great songs among them I virtually never listen to them apart from on the rare occasions when I listen to music on shuffle.

Then there's that Flaming Lips 4 vinyls simultaneously nonsense, which is ludicrously impractical and daft.

Also daft is bonus cassette's - stupid idea really, not good sound quality and people like me who just about remember the tail end of cassettes enough to have a bit of nostalgia probably don't have access to them now as they certainly weren't going to lug around their parents old cassette deck and have long ago dispensed with their venerable Walkman.

More relevant was Radiohead's pay what you want stunt with In Rainbows, kind of surprised not to see this internet equivalent of an honesty box rear its head a bit more.

SO what else is there out there and which release gimmicks have you enjoyed/hated?