Bootleg Recording - Definitions

Definitions

The word "bootleg" originates from the practice of smuggling illicit items in the legs of tall boots, particularly the smuggling of alcohol during the American Prohibition era. The word, over time, has come to refer to any illegal or illicit product. This term has become an umbrella term for illicit, unofficial, or unlicenced recordings, including vinyl LPs, bootleg silver CDs, or any other commercially sold bootlegged media or material.

Although unofficial and unlicensed recordings had existed before the 1960s, the very first rock bootlegs came in plain sleeves with the title rubber stamped on it. However, they quickly developed into more sophisticated packaging, in order to distinguish the manufacturer from inferior competitors. With today's packaging and desktop publishing technology, even the layman can create "official" looking CDs. With the advent of the cassette and CD-R, however, some bootlegs are traded privately with no attempt to be manufactured professionally. This is even more evident with the ability to share bootlegs via the Internet.

Bootlegs should not be confused with counterfeit or pirated recordings, which are merely unauthorised duplicates of officially released recordings, often attempting to resemble the official product as close as possible. Some record companies have considered that any record issued outside of their control, and for which they do not receive payment, to be a counterfeit, which includes bootlegs. However, some bootleggers are keen to stress that the markets for bootleg and counterfeit recordings are different, and a typical consumer for a bootleg will have bought most or all of that artist's official releases anyway.

Many bootlegs consist of private or professional studio recordings distributed without the artist's involvement, including demos, works-in-progress or discarded material. These might be made from private recordings not meant to be widely shared, or from master recordings stolen or copied from an artist's home, a recording studio or the offices of a record label, or they may be copied from promotional material issued to music publishers or radio stations, but not for commercial release.

A theme of early rock bootlegs was to copy deleted records, such as old singles and B-sides, onto a single LP, as a cheaper alternative to obtaining all the original recordings. Strictly speaking, these were pirated recordings, but because the work required to clear all the copyrights and publishing of every track for an official release was considered to be prohibitively expensive, the bootlegs became popular. Some bootlegs, however, did lead to official releases. The Who's Zoo bootleg, collecting early singles of The Who, inspired the official album Odds And Sods, which beat the bootleggers by issuing unreleased material, while various compilations of mid-1960s bands inspired the Nuggets series of albums.

However, the most common type is the live bootleg, or audience recording, which is created with sound recording equipment smuggled into a live concert. Many artists and most live venues prohibit this form of recording, but from the 1970s onwards the increased availability of portable technology made such bootlegging increasingly easy, and as this technology has improved so too has the general quality of these recordings. A number of bootlegs originated with FM radio broadcasts of live or previously recorded live performances.

The alternate terms ROIO or RoIO, an acronym meaning "Recording of Indeterminate Origin", or "Recording of Independent Origin", and VOIO or VoIO, an acronym meaning "Video of Indeterminate Origin", or "Video of Independent Origin", arose among Pink Floyd collectors trying to clarify the differences between counterfeits, illegally made copies, live bootlegs, and "ROIOs", meaning recordings whose legal status was difficult or even impossible to determine. The term has spread beyond Pink Floyd fans but its recognition and usage depends largely on the individual community. It is also sometimes used to denote a Pink Floyd recording of any kind..