Legit Soundtracks

[md01]

Do you buy official soundtracks and/or bootlegs?

For me, I would always try to buy the legit copy, but VG soundtracks are extremely expensive compared to standard CDs and I want to support the composers in buying their music but it does become very excessive to buying legit copies which I therefore have the only option to buy soundtracks over ebay such as miya records, alion, KO, ever anime etc.
Are there any sites that have special offers, discounts etc.?

Is there any difference in terms of sound quality between legit and bootleg copies?

[Irrational]

The problem is really availability. Whenever an American or British game has a soundtrack I like, finding it for sale is simple. For games from countries like Japan, I have to try Ebay or Amazon as the soundtrack is not sold through any retailers that I can readily use. Then of course there are the games to which no soundtrack was ever released. That is where Google comes in.

As for which is better, always the official release. With bootleg it can vary. If it was copied from the official release you can have loss of quality and sometimes static. If it was ripped directly from the game then you should have the same sound quality as the official release.

Remember: It is legal to rip music from games that you have purchased as long as you don't distribute it. It is also legal to have a rom of any game that you have purchased. Many emulators have a sound record function. Have fun!

[CaptainCommando]

Unfortunately, game soundtracks will remain expensive because it's a niche market, even in Japan. American albums will always be the exception. The film soundtrack market is also kinda niche, but it's more acceptable to be caught listening to John Williams than to Koji Kondo. Because of it's niche nature and the cost of imports, soundtracks will always be expensive. iTunes will probably help drop the price, but you ultimately lose out in track quality (MP3s are lossy, and they're not going to sell you Apple Lossless as it's inconvenient). Plus, digitally distributed files lack resell value.

I don't buy pirated soundtracks. A lot of times, the money goes to further piracy or drug rings or something (but who knows, really). Plus, you're essentially paying for stolen goods. If it comes down to a choice between a Sonmay and a download, I'd just download the thing. Both are illegal, but in the latter case, you're not paying someone else for something illegal. In addition, yeah, the pirate quality is going to vary.

If it comes down to it, buy soundtracks of composers you really enjoy to show them your support. I try to buy Yasunori Mitsuda albums for this reason. And try before you buy. CD Japan has sample audio now, and you could also download the album to see if it's really that good. I've been burnt a few times, and it's not fun to lose $60 on two albums you thought were going to be awesome.

I think a more interesting question is whether emulated music (say through SPC or vgmstream) is superior to line-in recording. If the emulation is 100%, then it should be. Beats me how they master the soundtrack CDs though. I DO know though that the SNES audio sounds different if you run it through the coax versus the RCA cables - and the coax sounds just how it does on the Wii Virtual Console.

Remember: It is legal to rip music from games that you have purchased as long as you don't distribute it. It is also legal to have a rom of any game that you have purchased. Many emulators have a sound record function. Have fun!

I don't think so. It's probably ok to record the game audio so long as you don't distribute it (unless you're recording a gameplay performance, in which case it would be the same as recording game play, which should be legal...), but there's nothing in the user's rights that says they can create a duplicate of a game or CD in whole or in part or use a duplicate, even if you own the original. The RIAA claims you can back up a CD to put on your MP3 player, but I doubt they'd let that pass in court (it's not in 100% clear writing). The thing with VGM though is it's such a niche market that nobody seems to care.

Anyway, my 2 yen :)

[Carl]

md01, these are great shops to buy Official Albums from, and most have programs where you can get points for discounts on your future orders.

http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/anime/game/index.html
www.vgmworld.com
www.play-asia.com
www.amazon.co.jp

[seanne]

You might also want to look into the second-hand market. We've got a marketplace here, and there's a very good and reliable one over at Soundtrack Central (http://soundtrackcentral.com/forums/) as well.

[Mika]

I always buy official copies, usually from cocoebiz/vgmworld, sometimes from otaku.com. The prices are not a problem for me, as new mainstream cds cost normally 21 euros in Finland (one cd), and ordering a 3 cd album, Infinite Undiscovery, for example, from vgmworld is about 40 euros.

So I get more minutes per euro when I buy vgm. :)

[Kewing]

I totally second CaptainCommando on the bootleg/piracy debate. You're better off downloading albums than paying for stolen material and that way you can really think about wether an album's really worth the price or not.
Besides, depending on the country, downloading music *might* not be illegal. If I recall correctly, in Spain, law allows downloading music as a private copy as long as you don't make benefit of it.

[pepak]

While I do prefer official releases, I do not go out of my way to obtain them. If I like some music, I want it on a pressed CD and if it is to be supplied by a bootlegger, so be it - it's not my fault that the oficial release is twice as expensive or not available at all.

The only problem is that with bootleg discs I can not be sure of quality - they COULD have been made from MP3s or poorly ripped CDs. Then on the other hand, I have bought official CDs whose quality was substandard or worse, and I have bought bootlegs whose quality was better than that of originals (though that was in movie soundtracks area, not game soundtracks).

Fortunatelly, I do not have to resort to game soundtrack bootlegs too often as the European/American soundtracks which I am interested in tend not to get bootlegged too much, if at all. As far as I know, most bootlegging is done with Japanese game soundtracks and those aren't too interesting for me.

[Sitorimon]

All my CD's are originals except two which were ebay'ed and were Son May ones. You'd think in this day and age they'd do some kind of print on demand service for CD's like what they do for small book runs - it'd work really well for game music that's not current as they is so much that's not available any more.

Simon

[CaptainCommando]

Simon, I love that idea.