In the age of digital music and high speed file transfer, music labels were faced with the problem of convincing consumers to continue to pay for music. While many large labels had the vast amounts of capital needed to take many people to court over music piracy, smaller labels knew they would quickly go out of business if they spent their money on anything other than producing music. Thus it was many albums started to be packaged with special extras, such as a bonus DVD, fancy booklet, and so on. The Merzbow CD Car is an example of just how strange these "extras" could get.

Small Swedish record label Releasing Eskimo handled releases of Japanese Noise musician Merzbow, and at one point released a "special limited edition" of Merzbow's album "Noise Embryo" in an unusual format, a Mercedes 230.

Apparently, one of the employees of the label had a Mercedes 230 that he barely drove, and the police warned him that they were going to tow it. Bereft of ideas on how to resolve the situation, he tinkered with the car's CD player, such that the Merzbow album would start when the car turned on, and would be impossible to stop or remove (presumably unless the CD player was again taken apart). The "special limited edition" of the album was then put up for sale, but unfortunately went unpurchased. Eventually, the owner gave up, removed the CD, and just dumped the car.

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