Beware if you're around Los Angeles and planning on buying Justin Bieber's Believe: You may go home with a different record. Electronic music producer Paz is the most recent performer to use a stunt to promote their new album. The DJ packaged his own disc within replica Bieber albums in order to fool at least 5,000 shoppers into buying his music.
Paz and his team didn't just slice open copies of Believe and slip in his own From The Bottom of My Hear to The Top of Your Lungs; buyers would recognize that the album had been opened and therefore probably wouldn't buy it. Instead, they replicated the front and back album art identically, and even mimicked the bar code so that cashiers wouldn't catch anything. Paz and his team then placed 5,000 copies of "Believe" at Best Buys, Target and Wal-Mart locations in Los Angeles. The Associated Press bought several copies of the Bieber and confirmed that at least one turned up a Paz disc.
"The general idea is that retail stores make it almost impossible for independent musicians to get their music in there," said Paz, who will probably take some criminal flack for this. "I've always believed that retail stores can be the best outlets and ambassadors for independent music. They just choose not to be and sell the same recycled (expletive). We thought if they're going to lock their doors to independent musicians, we're just going to knock them down and get our music in there."
Representatives for the outlets hadn't responded with comment as of publication, but it's going to be tough to find the fakes. If they're that well done, they'll be tough to identify by eye, and retailers won't want to open real albums by accident.
And don't forget, yesterday was the first of April. Paz may have pulled off the most successful April Fool's prank of 2014.
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