Beatles Bootleg Discs

Check the backs of music magazines, and you'll find plenty of sources for boots. Because these discs are not official releases, quality varies considerably from disc to disc and even from track to track. If you want to shop online, boots can be found at CD Cellar, CD Banzai!, (great service, highly recommended), CDnow!, Excellent CD, music machine mail order, Magic Com, and That CD Place.

If you're not familiar with bootleg discs, or boots for short, there is a distinction made between boots and pirated material. Pirated discs are cheaper, illegal copies of existing discs. Don't buy these. It's illegal and cuts into the profits of your favorite artists and the record companies that handle their work. Bootleg discs, however, are different. They contain unreleased material that usually only a die-hard fan would enjoy. Because of this, it's not in the economic interests of record companies to go to the expense of packaging and releasing it. But luckily for us, some of the of the engineers at these companies are die-hard fans themselves and make these rarities available.

(Net rumor has it that it's legal to buy them but technically illegal to sell them. Since it doesn't cut into anyone's profits and, in fact, promotes interest in the artists, companies rarely confront sellers of boots. NOTE: I have no idea how true these statements are, however!)

                                      


Mike Markowski
Last modified: Decemebr 12, 1996