I’ll be honest with you. I don’t normally read the Creative Review. I always feel a bit out of my depth flicking through its pages, like the people who have contributed to it are somehow on a higher creative plane than I am.

One thing I do know a lot about though is the Pet Shop Boys. So when I saw that the special vinyl edition of their most recent album “Yes” – created in collaboration with Farrow and The Vinyl Factory – has made it into the 2010 Creative Review Annual I was delighted.

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David Gray Music Tee Front

Everyone knows that buying CDs is on the decline and when it comes to owning music… digital is the way to go. But you have to credit the people behind The Muisc Tee for getting us to part with our hard-earned green stuff for something more than just a digital download.

The Music Tee is a new product line that combines digital music and fashion in one eye-and-ear-catching package.  Music Tees are high-end t-shirts that feature album art and a tracklist. Each shirt comes with a unique code that can be used to download a digital copy of the album associated with that Music Tee. This enables people to discover and purchase music in fashion retail environments, then hear and wear an album!

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Old stylie vinyl records

As a child of the 80s, I’m old enough to remember when buying music meant a trip to the local record shop, browsing through vinyl collections and being mesmerised by the cover art. If you were lucky enough, your chosen album would come with ‘extras’ such as snap shot photography taken during a live concert, maybe a small bio of the band members and more often than not, the lyrics to all your favourite songs.

As we approached the digital age, records became CDs, which to me, never had the same impact. Sure there was the additional CD booklet, but they lacked the tactility of records, and the brilliant photography lost some of it’s shine squashed into the smaller not-quite-square format. CDs will inevitably be replaced by downloads, if they haven’t already, (I don’t really know anybody who buys CDs any more), but what about all the cool ‘extras’ we’ve come to expect?

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