diff --git a/tools/release/sources.sh b/tools/release/sources.sh
index 2e9dd30bde..9a1360a0bb 100755
--- a/tools/release/sources.sh
+++ b/tools/release/sources.sh
@@ -10,4 +10,9 @@ outdir="output/source"
 
 mkdir -p "${outdir}"
 git archive --prefix=rockbox-$version/ -o "${outdir}/rockbox-source-${version}.tar" ${tag}
-xz -f "${outdir}/rockbox-source-${version}.tar"
+# either compress with xz... or...
+#xz -f "${outdir}/rockbox-source-${version}.tar"
+# recompress with 7zip
+tar -xf "${outdir}/rockbox-source-${version}.tar"
+7z a -mx=9 "${outdir}/rockbox-source-${version}.7z" "rockbox-${version}"
+rm -Rf "rockbox-${version}" "${outdir}/rockbox-source-${version}.tar"