Mac DeMarco’s secret tour CDs have made it onto streaming platforms, with four albums, Dog on the Rock, Seven Off the Two, Seaplane Dog, and The View From Tian Tian, now available on DSPs for the first time.
The releases caught most listeners off guard on Friday, though a dedicated slice of the fanbase had already heard them. DeMarco had been quietly handing out CD-R copies during his most recent tour, making the records something between a secret and a gift depending on how close to the barrier you were standing.
Mac DeMarco secret tour CDs: how they got made
The origins are suitably low-key. According to Stereogum, DeMarco began handing out CD-R copies of Dog on the Rock on his European tour last fall, with no announcement and no fanfare. The other three records followed the same pattern, passed along at shows before ever touching a server.
That scrappy, hand-to-hand distribution is all over the music itself. Each track is named after what appears to be a random set of numbers rather than anything resembling a conventional song title, which gives the whole project the feel of something you might find tucked inside a zine at a record fair rather than dropped with a press release and a Spotify playlist pitch.
His own label, his own rules
All four records have landed on Mac’s Record Label, DeMarco’s own imprint that has been home to his music since 2019’s Here Comes The Cowboy, according to Stereogum. Running your own label means you can release four albums on a Friday with no prior notice and name every song after a string of digits if you feel like it. There is something genuinely freeing about that setup, and these releases feel like proof of it.
The most recent studio album before this batch, Guitar, dropped in 2025. The four new records exist in a different register entirely, less finished product, more a document of whatever DeMarco was doing between tour dates and soundchecks.
Dog on the Rock, Seven Off the Two, Seaplane Dog, and The View From Tian Tian are all streaming now on Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, and Amazon. If you were at a show on that European run and picked up a CD-R, you already know what you’re getting. If not, Friday was a good morning to be a Mac DeMarco fan.
