Okay this is cool as hell.
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Yeah, personally, I think my chances of being heard would increase exponentially even with this cryptic form of marketing considering I can count my bandcamp sales on one hand after 10 years
It wouldn’t really be “marketing” though because the physical items would need to be unlabeled to maintain that special mystique, otherwise people wouldn’t wonder or feel enticed to figure out what was on the tapes or CDs, they may even mistake you for some other artist, but either way it would be a special experience
If you’re lucky, some local internet sleuths will start a Reddit thread about you, then you would become the stuff of legends
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If you want to go proper obscure release on a game cart, I’ve seen C64, Sega Megadrive\Genesis, Gameboy, but there are probably others too.
Techmoan did a video about some a while back:
Edit: Also that link I posted above with the MD do cassette duplication too, not as expensive.
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I e-wasted my MiniDisc recorder and discs (used to record my kids’ classical music performances) about two years before getting into synths, and I now kind of regret it. It was always great fun to use.
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Holy hell this is awesome.
I can’t believe I didn’t know this was a thing. Awesome.
I have the goto80 dubcart, really is very cool.
I’d love to do something like that myself but don’t have any C64 programming chops.
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One advantage to minidisc is that with the right set up copying them is near instant so DIY production isn’t nearly as bad. The downside is not that many people have minidisc players I think. I actually really enjoy it as a format, sadly you can’t really take advantage of HiMD PCM unless you want a really exclusive release.
I do all home dubbing on my tapes these days which is a bit time consuming but you can do it pretty passively once you get it all rigged up. Plus it’s a good excuse to get a three head deck which is pretty fun for listening also.
Currently pressing plants may take over half a year to deliver cause they are swamped with work from big labels. If you do vinyl I’d suggest to find your way into a distribution to move the product, unless you already have a lot of followers that would buy them from you personally.
Just did a very small run of these 
had to hand cut all the labels which is a pain (maybe a cricut machine would solve this) I really enjoy the look of them with the holographic labels though.
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They’re gorgeous!
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Maybe prints of the artwork on a good quality card, with a d/l code on the back? A friend did a release by getting cardboard cd covers printed but no cd, just d/l codes
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Or maybe commissioning a printmaker artist to do a little run of art cards and then maybe print and stick a download code to the back of them. Or maybe if you are more artistically inclined get a little linoleum block kit and go to town.
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Ohhhh those are both really good ideas.
Have you decided on anything yet?
From my experience even with label backing and an ok Bandcamp following most physical assets just don’t sell. It took me a year to sell 15 tapes but… I did a run of posters for a few songs that sold quickly. As much as physical media is selling I would be hard pressed to know anyone that is selling enough that they aren’t sitting on it at the end of the day. Your mileage may very of course as I am doing a very niche of niche market.
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Hmm I have a pretty small fan base and I have sold through all my small batch releases 15-20 units except my most recent release. I think it is actually nice to have a few old tapes around as when new people roll in they often buy up one of each I’ve found. This promotes releasing more often though, to more or less keep having new people come in buy the new thing and maybe pick up your last stock of an older release. One tape I had a label do distribution on and they sold them all in a few days. I kind of expect to sit on my run of 5 minidiscs, as I am not sure of the actual market for those but I sold a few pretty quick. Honestly it is a little discouraging seeing how fast they sold at that label, kind of showed me how bad I am at reaching my potential audience lol.
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I’ve done that. Great fun. I always did it with tapes. This would have been between 2002 to 2004 or so. I mostly slipped them into the shelves of record shops and thrift stores. It felt like reverse shoplifting. Sometimes I’d leave them on the bus or train, newspaper boxes, info table at the food bank, pretty much any opportune spot when I was out around the Bay Area. I have no idea if anyone ever listened to a single one but it was fun and practically free.
On the more general note of unconventional release formats, I toyed with the floppy disk thing around the same time (early 2000s). This was mostly because the place I lived had a bunch of abandoned cars on the property and one was completely filled with floppy discs and one of my roommates had an old floppy duplicator he’d built long before. I made a few (very short) but nobody wanted anything to do with them so I never duplicated in bulk. Maybe now 20 years later they could be considered kitsch enough to be cool, back then people just thought I was dumb.
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I’m leaning toward a run of art prints, and a very small run of tapes from someone local. i had considered art prints briefly, and seeing it suggested here somehow cemented it. This is as much a passion project as anything and I know I’ll likely end up with a box of merch sitting in a box, but it’s such a fun idea.
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I think prints are a great way to go, if you got the extra budget maybe a run of stickers to throw in the mailers as well? For me it really wasn’t about the sales as much as creating something physical so it was fun to put together a nice little grab bag for people.
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