POLL: How do you feel about bootleg copies of OST's?

[samael]

Title says it all.

[Xenofan 29A]

I have never knowingly bought a bootleg. I ended up with one by accident once, but I would rather download illegally than buy a bootleg disc.

[samael]

Yeah, I actually had to download a few because they were insanely rare. The granstream saga OST is pretty rare.

[ilef]

I can't say I "like" bootlegs, but as long as they offer the same audio quality of legit releases... I can live with them, too.

[Foxhack]

I see bootlegs as a novelty, not as a collector's item.

Except for my weird Pink Floyd "The Final Cat" bootleg. That one's just amusing as hell.

[Ghaleon64]

I didn't realize half my Konami albums were bootlegs until recently. I have since replaced them all with officials.

I'm not against bootlegs really but when it comes to my personal collection I'd like to have originals.

And somebody mentioned the Granstream Saga OST being rare? I got one off eBay a couple months ago for $40. I was pleased to find it for sure.

[pepak]

I don't mind them, if I know I am buing a bootleg and not a legitimate release. I have yet to encounter a case where there is other difference between the bootleg and the real thing than price. (And btw., if I pay $100 on eBay, none of this amount goes to the composer, in either of the two cases, so it's difficult to claim that one option is better or worse from the point of view of legitimacy.)

[Hellacia]

I was going to pick option 3, but

If it's not original it has no collectors value!

doesn't really describe how I feel about bootlegs so I refrained from voting.

Bootlegs are just that: an essentially pirated and in almost all places illegal copy of a soundtrack. I'm not going to pay money for that. The thought is laughable. Like someone mentioned, if I'm going to have a pirated copy of something, it's going to be free. Buying music is all about two things:
1. Owning an original of something you love.
2. Supporting the artist.
In the case of #2, I don't think much of VGM sales goes to the artist but then what do I know. In the case of #1, it kind of ties in with collector's value, but not really; I don't care to amass a huge collection of things, I just care to own things that I like (and then occasionally buy a rare and obscure soundtrack and grin and squee when I see it on my shelf amongst everything else as if it's so normal).

I can't stand bootlegs. I can't the thought of someone buying something, making a bunch of cheap copies, and then taking my money for one of them. It's just insulting. Not to mention, I'd be surprised if their are some bootlegs out there that weren't copied quite right and technically differ in audio quality from the original (maybe not audibly, but still). I don't like the idea of buying something that someone copied. If I printed out the artwork of one of your favorite Final Fantasy CDs, burned the music onto CDs, slapped some covers on them and then packaged them up and sold them to you, it wouldn't be very nice, would it.

[Lich King]

If the "bootleg" is a factory pressed CD AND it's NOT available any other way, I'm fine with it.

However, from reading the current posts, it seems that bootleg is being defined as a copy of an existing media. That, I don't care for.

[GoldfishX]

Bootlegs have kind of died off recently. They still exist for the big titles, but the days of Son May and Ever Anime covering the majority of VGM and anime music releases are gone. You don't see them nearly as much as, say, when FFVIII's OST first came out.

I don't particularly like owning them, but in my poor college days and back when dial-up was the norm, they were a necessary evil to acquire some VGM. Most of the time, it was for albums that I was undecided on and probably wouldn't have bought the import for anyway and over time, I purged most of them out of my collection. Funny part was, for multi-disc sets, the cost ended up being roughly the same or more than an official release (most retailers charged close to $15 per disc, so some 4 disc OST's were routinely $60! lol). Recently, I had to plunk down for the SM version of the Tenchi Muyo 6 CD vocal collection box because I've never seen an official copy of it and I didn't have the patience to track one down, nor did I want to see what one goes for nearly 15 years after its' release. I got my lossless audio extract, I'm happy.

[NostalgiaTunez]

I guess I've never got bootlegs before, but when certain titles like Dark Cloud don't have an official soundtrack or it was cut, one has to either go without the music or download MP3s of the internet somewhere. I figure if you've made an honest hard attempt to buy the ost, checking amazon, eBay, etc. and you still aren't finding anything, then you should just as well download the music somewhere online. But I would never just download the music when ost's were readily available to buy. It's not fair to the composers who make the games.

[smartalex2014]

Here are my following titles I replaced with the legitimate ones

1. Sakura Tsuushin
I gave the bootleg copy away years ago. Last year, I have the real thing!

2. The End of Evangelion
I've had it since 1999 until I found a real copy last year so I gave the bootleg away as well.

3. KOR Singing Heart
I've had the bootleg since 1998 until I went to Book Off last year. The legitimate copy had the song contents, The artwork and the cd staff. Got rid of that bootleg!

4. Fushigi Yuugi OST
This is the same place same time and day I got the real copy, at Book Off. The booklet of the official copy had the CD staff and the CD is mirror like.

That was a big difference!!

[Boyblunder]

No, no and thrice no. Bootlegs and obi-less soundtracks, my gosh the thought of such abominations!

[Midoryu]

Originally Posted by Hellacia

I was going to pick option 3, but

doesn't really describe how I feel about bootlegs so I refrained from voting.

Bootlegs are just that: an essentially pirated and in almost all places illegal copy of a soundtrack. I'm not going to pay money for that. The thought is laughable. Like someone mentioned, if I'm going to have a pirated copy of something, it's going to be free. Buying music is all about two things:
1. Owning an original of something you love.
2. Supporting the artist.
In the case of #2, I don't think much of VGM sales goes to the artist but then what do I know. In the case of #1, it kind of ties in with collector's value, but not really; I don't care to amass a huge collection of things, I just care to own things that I like (and then occasionally buy a rare and obscure soundtrack and grin and squee when I see it on my shelf amongst everything else as if it's so normal).

I can't stand bootlegs. I can't the thought of someone buying something, making a bunch of cheap copies, and then taking my money for one of them. It's just insulting. Not to mention, I'd be surprised if their are some bootlegs out there that weren't copied quite right and technically differ in audio quality from the original (maybe not audibly, but still). I don't like the idea of buying something that someone copied. If I printed out the artwork of one of your favorite Final Fantasy CDs, burned the music onto CDs, slapped some covers on them and then packaged them up and sold them to you, it wouldn't be very nice, would it.

I agree with Hellacia, 100% my thoughts regarding this topic.
I'm not "collecting", I only buy music I absolutely want to listen to, that's why the third option isn't my one either.
If I wanted to rip off the original artist I would download them myself and not pay somebody else to do that for me, so that one would make a fortune out of it instead.
Regarding the Final Fantasy-example:
I've seen a guy on Ebay a few years ago who sold "all of your favourite Final Fantasy music" for 10€, on a silver DVD in a transparent plastic case.
That's the first time I reported someone on Ebay, was taken down 2 days later. Since then I search bootlegs once in a while and report them, that's always 20 to 70 reports on this specific day. If anyone of the reported sellers reads this, thank the guy mentioned above.

Sure, if you buy a used copy the creator doesn't get your money.
But he got his money from the guy you bought from.
One person uses it, one person paid. At least that's the way it should be.
A bootlegger paid only once, if at all, and sells a hundred copies from that.
So there is still a difference in morality.

Thing is, you get very invested over time, you know labels, artists, shops to have a spot on, and if it's a soundtrack to something you are passionate about, like I was about Final Fantasy that time, you want to defend that.
Defend the structures and people who made good soundtracks possible and who gave you the chance to listen to them.
It started 10 years ago for me that I began to always look at the name of the composer first before looking at the title of the game/movie/whatever, because music is the easiest way for me to get drown into its world again and to enrich my own.
I spend a lot of time reading recommendations and release lists on the web to find a possibly hidden treasure.
Tastes are different and there is so much to keep in mind and to listen to that we don't need bootlegs to make it even more complicated.
I don't mind if somebody downloads an album he likes, even if I don't do that myself and only if it doesn't become a habit.
I don't mind if someone uses bootlegs himself, if he's fine with the quality and the original is hard to get, he may go for it.
But people who sell bootlegs are parasites, they want to make money out of other peoples work, nothing more, nothing less.
They copy&paste something another person created and if the original artist ceases to make music because of this, the bootlegger just finds a new victim to rip off.
Because a bootlegger doesn't care about music and wants to earn money from the fact that I do.

Heyho.

Midoryu