[strohmie]

This is just for anyone who ever wants to buy a game, anime, or J-pop CD but wants to make sure the CD they are getting is not a bootleg.

Taiwanese bootleg companies and their catalog codes (and there are dozens of others):

GGG, GA, GSM, SM, SS, AnG, SMA, SMB, GAME, CK - Son May
A8, TV, CV, NP, GM - Ever Anime
ALCA - Alion
B, H - Ho Son
R - Archer Records


Ways to avoid buying a bootleg:

1) Avoid the companies listed above (again, Son May, Ever Anime, Alion, Ho Son, Archer Records)

2) Only buy CD from eBay if you can verify that the catalog number is from an authentic release. If no catalog number is listed with the auction, *do not buy.*

3) If possible, buy your imports from a reputable dealer, such as:

CD Japan
HMV Japan
GameMusic.com
AnimeNation


The first two are best if you are buying in bulk, because you don't have to deal with the heavy markups from American retailers like gamemusic.com. However, shipping charges nullify those savings if you don't buy multiple CDs.

Feel free to post any questions you may have, and I'll try to get to them.

 

[Born2bwire]

Yay Strohmie! I've ordered from gamemusic.com before and they're pretty good although expensive, but what can you do? I really need to coerce my Japanese friends to start smuggling CD's back from Japan for me.

 

[37DP]

Wow. Well, that totally sucks.

I have two bootlegs then,

DDRMAX2 7th Mix Soundtrack - Alion
DDR 4th Mix Soundtrack - Ever Anime

I didn't buy them, my girlfriend bought them for me for our anniversary, but still, I feel shafted. (Also I'd like to say that they're both very good CD sets, however the Alion CDs are of a better quality, while the Ever Anime ones look like they pressed the CD at some teen's house.

)

Oh well.

EDIT: (Just FYI, both CDs were bought at a local comic store, "A-1 Comics" I'll bet the rest of their imported CDs are also bootlegs....)

 

[strohmie]

There are very few stores in the U.S. that you can simply walk into and buy an authentic CD - most anime or comic stores have bootlegs, and the only other places that might have authentic ones are Japanese bookstores.

 

[37DP]

Really? Huh.

Well, this was the first time that either my girlfriend or I have bought imported CDs locally. Normally we get them off some online store (Can't recall the name, my g/f buys them.

), and I'm sure they're not bootlegs. (At least, my Ayumi Hamasaki and X Japan CDs aren't....)

 

[Music Fanatic]

Do bootleg Japanese CDs forge the JASRAC symbol?

 

[kaiwei]

POP CDs are not as bad because of its wide availablilty but it's the OOP music like anime soundtracks or game soundtracks that are really prone to these sort of piracy.

 

[strohmie]

Not sure offhand Music Fanatic, I haven't actually bought a bootleg CD in about six years.

 

[adhoc]

what are the actual problems with bootleg cds?

 

[Music Fanatic]

Well, I spend a lot of time in East Asia, and I regularly see (apparently legal, licsensed) Japanese pop CDs in Taiwan and Hong Kong manufactured by local vendors. These are for Hong Kong and Taiwan only, but still find their way thanks to questionable parallel imports (these are not legal in the US, but are legal in Hong Kong.) However, the artists do get royalties from these CDs, so they aren't exactly bootlegs.

 

[strohmie]

adhoc, the artists of the original music do not get any money from sales of the bootlegged versions. The bootlegs also usually have inferior packacing - in the example of the Cowboy Bebop box set, the authentic one had a 50 some page booklet, while the bootleg had only a few pages.

This may as not be true anymore, but some of the older copies had inferior sound quality as well from the copying process. This was a problem with SM and Ever Anime a while back, not sure about now or with the other companies. SM was the first big bootlegger, the rest have come on since.