Bootleg recording

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Bootleg recording is the practice of capturing and distributing audio or video of a performance without the artist's permission or any official legal sanction. In January 1970, Rolling Stone described the sound quality of an unauthorized Rolling Stones concert recording as "superb, full of presence, picking up drums, bass, both guitars and the vocals beautifully... it is the ultimate Rolling Stones album." That review, of a record called Live'r Than You'll Ever Be, helped legitimize an industry that operated entirely in the shadows. How did this underground trade begin? Who built it? And why have some artists ultimately embraced the very practice they once fought?

• 2. The Word and Its Origins

  ›

  The word "bootleg" traces back to the smuggling of illicit items inside the legs of tall boots, a practice closely tied to alcohol trafficking during American Prohibition. Over time it became a catch-all term for anything unlicensed or illicit. Collectors also coined the term ROIO, an acronym for "Recording of Indeterminate/Independent Origin," which arose among Pink Floyd fans specifically to acknowledge that both the source and the copyright status of a given recording were often impossible to pin down.

  Not every unauthorized recording is a bootleg in the purist sense. Record companies have at times labeled any release outside their control a counterfeit, blurring the distinction. Bootleggers themselves push back on this. They argue that a typical bootleg buyer has already purchased every official release an artist has put out, and is seeking something no official channel can provide.

  The concept of capturing a performance without the creator's blessing is older than rock music itself. Author Clinton Heylin traced the impulse all the way back to unauthorized transcripts of William Shakespeare's plays. Copyright as a formal legal concept only crystallized in the 19th century, leading to the first Berne Convention in 1886. The United States declined to accept the original terms, which is one reason so many pirated sheet music reprints circulated there by the end of that century.

• 3. Before Rock and Roll

  ›

  Saxophone player and Charlie Parker devotee Dean Benedetti made some of the most celebrated pre-rock bootleg recordings, capturing several hours of Parker's solos at live clubs in 1947 and 1948 using tape and disc equipment. Benedetti kept the recordings private, and they were only rediscovered in 1988, more than thirty years after his death. By that point they had acquired the status of a "jazz myth." Mosaic Records eventually released most of them officially in the 1990s.

  Film soundtracks were another target. When an official soundtrack had been re-recorded with a studio orchestra, demand grew for the original audio pulled directly from the film. A bootleg of Judy Garland performing in Annie Get Your Gun from 1950 circulated because she had been replaced early in production by Betty Hutton, even though a complete soundtrack had already been recorded with Garland.

  The Recording Industry Association of America was already pushing back. The Wagern-Nichols Home Recordist Guild openly sold recordings made at the Metropolitan Opera House without paying royalties. The American Broadcasting Company and Columbia Records, which held the rights to those recordings, sued and obtained a court injunction against the Guild. The legal battles that would define the bootleg trade for the next century had already begun.

• 4. The First Rock Bootlegs

  ›

  Bob Dylan's motorcycle accident in 1966 and his subsequent retreat from public life created the conditions for the first major rock bootleg. Between his disappearance and the release of John Wesley Harding at the end of 1967, other artists scored hits with Dylan songs he had never officially released himself. Demand for his original recordings grew, especially after they began airing on local radio in Los Angeles.

  Through radio industry contacts, a group of bootleggers obtained a reel-to-reel tape of unreleased Dylan material originally meant for music publishers. They persuaded a pressing plant to press between 1,000 and 2,000 copies, paying in cash and using no real names or addresses. Because printing a proper sleeve would have drawn too much attention from record labels, they issued the album in a plain white cover with the words "Great White Wonder" rubber stamped on it. That was 1969.

  The same year, a bootlegger known only as "Dub" bought a Sennheiser 805 shotgun microphone and a Uher 4000 reel-to-reel recorder to capture Rolling Stones shows on their 1969 American tour. The resulting album, Live'r Than You'll Ever Be, was released shortly before Christmas of that year and sold several tens of thousands of copies, far exceeding what a typical classical or opera bootleg would move. Dub went on to become one of the founders of Trade Mark of Quality, the most influential bootleg label of the 1970s. The Stones' own official live album Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! followed later in 1970, prompted in part by the bootleg's success.

• 5. The 1970s Underground

  ›

  Stadium rock created a commercial opening for bootleggers during the 1970s. Labels like Kornyfone and Trade Mark of Quality pressed large numbers of vinyl records for profit. Led Zeppelin's Live on Blueberry Hill, recorded at the LA Forum in 1970, sold well enough to draw the personal anger of their manager, Peter Grant.

  A 1966 Dylan concert with the Hawks at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, long misidentified as the Royal Albert Hall, was released as a bootleg in 1970 and found both critical and commercial success. Its good sound quality and historical weight drove demand. The bootleg of the Who's early singles, known as Zoo, directly inspired their official album Odds and Sods, which the band rushed out to beat the bootleggers with their own unreleased material.

  In Los Angeles, pressing plants that were not the first choice of major labels turned to bootleg work to fill idle time. Secrecy varied. Sometimes bootleg labels listed the real artist and song names, counting on plant workers to look the other way. Other times, fictitious names disguised the content: a 1974 Pink Floyd bootleg called Brain Damage was released under the name the Screaming Abadabs, one of the band's early monikers.

  Collectors during this era relied heavily on Hot Wacks, an annual underground magazine that catalogued known bootlegs, tracked fictitious labels, and rated sound quality. The pioneer known as Rubber Dubber mailed bootleg recordings directly to magazines like Rolling Stone in hopes of review coverage, and when Dylan's label Columbia objected, Rubber Dubber argued he was simply putting fans closer to the music.

• 6. Cassettes, CDs, and Prince

  ›

  The 1980s changed the economics of bootlegging. Affordable cassette dubbing equipment meant that anyone could copy and distribute recordings without pressing plants or professional packaging. Stalls at the Glastonbury Festival briefly sold mass copies of soundboard recordings from bands who had played only hours before, until raids by officials wound the trade down by the decade's end.

  One of the most discussed bootlegs from the 1980s was The Black Album by Prince. Scheduled for commercial release in late 1987, the album was pulled by Prince on the 1st of December, just before its release date, and 500,000 copies were ordered destroyed. A small number of advance copies had already shipped, and those became the source material for a bootleg that circulated widely before Prince eventually authorized an official release.

  Near the end of the 1980s, the Ultra Rare Trax series of Beatles bootlegs demonstrated that digital remastering onto compact disc could produce sound quality comparable to official studio releases. That proof of concept set the stage for a major expansion of the bootleg CD market in the following decade.

• 7. Copyright, Courts, and the Law

  ›

  Article 9 of the Berne Convention, first adopted in 1886, grants authors the exclusive right to authorize reproductions of their work, and it explicitly states that sound and visual recordings count as reproductions. Performers' rights, where they exist, often carry a shorter term: the Rome Convention sets a minimum of twenty years from the date of performance. That shorter window created demand for bootleg CDs of 1960s recordings in the late 1980s, when certain performances were no longer covered.

  In the United States, bootlegs occupied a legal grey area until the 1976 Copyright Act extended protection to all recordings, including what the law described as "all misappropriated recordings, both counterfeit and pirate." Federal law banned bootlegs explicitly under 17 USC 1101 when the Uruguay Round Agreements Act took effect in 1994.

  In 2004, U.S. District Judge Harold Baer Jr. struck down the portion of the federal bootleg statute that banned sales of live music recordings, ruling that it effectively created a perpetual copyright period for original performances. That ruling was overturned in 2007 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which found the anti-bootlegging statute within Congress's constitutional powers.

  Australia presented a different test case. Companies there exploited relaxed copyright laws until Sony Music Entertainment challenged them in 1993 on trademark grounds. Courts ruled in favor of allowing unauthorized recordings as long as they were clearly marked as such. The updated GATT 1994 agreement closed that gap effective the 1st of January 1995.

• 8. Artists React and Adapt

  ›

  Bruce Springsteen has acknowledged understanding why fans buy bootlegs, though he objects to the lack of quality control and the profit motive. A study of Springsteen fans found that 80 percent considered some bootlegs essential purchases, even after owning every official release. In 2014, Springsteen announced that concertgoers could buy a USB stick at shows to download a recording of that evening's performance.

  Frank Zappa took a more combative approach. He created the Beat the Boots! boxed sets, which were direct LP copies of existing bootlegs, and set up a hotline for fans to report unauthorized releases. He was frustrated that the FBI showed no interest in pursuing bootleggers. The first set included As An Am Zappa, in which Zappa can be heard on tape complaining that bootleggers were releasing new material before he could.

  The Grateful Dead developed the most distinctive policy of any major act. They tolerated taping throughout their career and in 1985 formally endorsed live recording, designating specific areas where they believed the sound was best. The saturation of tapes among fans effectively neutralized any commercial bootleg market for their shows. Pearl Jam, Phish, and the Dave Matthews Band adopted similar tolerant stances, provided no profit changed hands. Dave Matthews Band went further: in 2002 they released Busted Stuff as a direct response to the internet success of The Lillywhite Sessions, a collection they had never planned to put out.

  King Crimson's guitarist Robert Fripp took a different path. Though Fripp prohibited recording at Crimson concerts, his company Discipline Global Mobile sold concert recordings as downloads, including what it called "official bootlegs" reverse-engineered from fan recordings. By 2009 that approach was described as unique among music labels. Australian band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard later opened an entire section of their official website to releasing their own show recordings, and went so far as permitting fans to sell bootlegs commercially, provided the band received physical copies on vinyl or CD.