Note: This page is for information only. By putting down the general "CD-R Trading Rules" here, I am not committing to any promises of providing any CD-Rs to everyone, upon their request. I don't have a lot of spare time to enter the CD-R Trading Circles full time, although I am open to negotiating for a limited number of trades for something that is very desirable to me. I do ask that newbies need not apply, as I also do not have the time to personally start newcomers on the road to trading. Basically, if you've never heard of a bootleg, don't own any, and don't know how to get any, feel free to glean useful info by reading this page, but don't please contact me for any trades until you've built up a collection.

Over the past several years, recordable CD (CD-R) units have become normal consumer electronics units. Prior to the existence of recordable CD machines, music fans used to use cassette tape or DAT tape as a means of trading non-commercially released music (that is, bootlegs). Cassette tapes have the problem of quality degradation with each dubbed generation. DAT machines had, at one time, been popular among professional musicians and serious, well-heeled live tape traders, but they never really caught on with the general public.

CD-R machines are now wildly popular, and most PCs for sale these days already have one installed, or as a very inexpensive add-on option. For those who don't want to learn how to use a PC, or fool around with learning software, there are standalone Phillips and Pioneer CD-R units that work almost like regular cassette decks. Either type of CD-R machine has eliminated the problems of the older analog trading media, namely generational loss or incompatibility with general consumer equipment.

There are two different types of music fans in the bootleg world: newbies and players. A newbie is someone who owns few, or no bootlegs. A newbie can find very appealing "forbidden fruit" things like bootlegs on web pages all over the place, but finds very quickly that obtaining such items are a challenge. Yet there are ways of breaking into the trading world, even as a newbie. The trick is to spend as little time in the newbie phase as possible, and to graduate to the player ranks as quickly as possible.

A player is someone who already has a bootleg collection. A player is sometimes an ultra-specialist... someone who has 300+ boots of one artist. A player already knows the boot trading rules, making negotiations quick and pain-free.

• Never offer money in exchange for boots. First off, selling bootlegs is illegal, and any player will stay away from that sort of thing. Players don't want to be arrested, players don't do boot trading as a full-time business, and, most importantly, players don't need the money. Players collect and trade for the love of music, not the need to make extra cash on the side for mortgage payments.

• Do not offer dupes of commercially-released CDs, or dupes of any items that can simply be bought in a store. Players are not CD pirates, and do not condone CD piracy. Players will most likely not accept a offers of these, because dupes of in-print CDs are defrauding artists of royalty money. For example, if you were to dub a copy of The Beatles Anthology 2 and pass them out, every dupe you do is one less legit CD sold. So 5 dupes means that the Beatles had lost out on 5 sales of their legit product. Players don't dig that.

• Find a player that's nearby. Maybe you can strike up a friendly conversation at a concert. Maybe you work with a player, or go to school with one, or are involved in social activities that might bring you in contact with one. You might even be related to one. A player that happens to be a friend might not be adverse to giving you a few discs, as a favor, or in exchange for a lunch date, a movie or a few drinks.

• Do your research and find out which items went out of print. There is a great secondary market for commercial CDs and videos that had gone out of print. It is nobody's fault that record companies sometimes make stupid decisions and let many CD titles go out of print. So, now that some music is unavailable in stores, yet there may still be a demand for it... this can open up a fine trading opportunity for a newbie. An newbie might be able to offer a dub of an out-of-print CD in order to obtain a boot in trade. For example, large parts of Olivia Newton-John's CD catalog is out of print. Believe it or not, several Milli Vanilli-related CDs are collectable.

• Do explore anything unique in your own collection. CD singles, 12" singles, special-edition CDs, records, imports, fan club-only discs, etc. may contain music that is not currently available anymore. These discs may have variant song versions, or unusual songs, or special live performances that are not on the regular discs, and can no longer be bought in a store. These too can be potential trade material.

• Buy a CD-R machine. Doesn't matter if it's a PC-based one or a standalone one. Because of the way that the boot trading rules have changed so quickly over the past 3 years, most players will no longer accept cassette tapes. Besides, cassette tapes have too many disadvantages... they cost more to buy, they cost more to mail, they're subject to speed variations from machine to machine, they sometimes have different head azimuth settings that make tapes sound awful on a different machine, they're subject to sound degradation/generational loss and added hiss, and they need to be listened to and dubbed in "real-time".

• Go to used record stores, small privately-owned stores, collector's record stores, record conventions, or even street vendors in search of boots. Sometimes boots come up in collectable record collector's publications, like Goldmine, or on online auctions. Be prepared to spend a lot of time hunting for these treasures. The prize goes to the patient. You'll never find them in large chain stores, so don't even ask. They'd laugh at you.

• Do seek out players who like helping newbies. These players can help ease your own transition into becoming a player by providing you with a seed which can blossom into a full-fledged, viable boot collection. Look for players that accept "3 for 1 + p" trades.  This means that you would send them 3 discs for every one boot disc that you want back, plus you would cover the return mail postage costs. So, in a real life scenario, this is how it works... you're browsing for some great Elton John boots. You land on a page that accepts "3 for 1 + p". You select a double-CD Elton set, and e-mail the player to make sure that they understand what you want and who you are. So then you'd go to an office supply store and buy a package of blank CD-R discs, and perhaps some cardboard mailers. Follow your player's instructions re: brand names, sometimes they accept only certain brands. Then you would place six blank CD-R discs and a self-addressed, stamped cardboard mailer inside of a larger envelope and you would mail it, and your request to your player (make sure you arrange to get the cover artwork!). You should eventually receive your mailer back, with 2 Elton discs in it. Your player has kept the other 4 as the standard "fee" for the service.

So You Think You're Ready to Be a Player

• Okay, once you have obtained a few boot or useful trade-bait discs, from whatever source, you are now ready to start playing. Your discs should have inserts, front and back, in order to make you a contender. You wouldn't really want your collection to consist of CD-R discs in empty jewel cases. You want your collection to look like a "real" CDs with "real" inserts. Guess what, players like that, too. So you would need to dupe your inserts somehow.  If you have them physically, you can take them to a copy shop and have them copied in color. The "big boys" like Kinko's or CopyMax might refuse to do it for you. No problem, use a self-service machine, or find a Mom n' Pop copy shop run by friendly immigrants with foreign accents, and they'll be glad to help. Or else, you can simply scan your inserts as .JPG files.

• If you're going to be scanning inserts, at least make them of decent size and quality. A player would expect to be able to print a good-looking insert from your scan. So, choose a resolution that would make the insert at least 750 x 750 pixels, and compress at medium-compression JPG. Smaller-sized inserts at higher JPG compression get much poorer printed results. A properly-done scan can be as low as 115k in size.

• If you don't have inserts, then make some up. If you're not savvy on this, then find a friend or co-worker who knows how to make those things. Or else, surf the Net and see if someone else happens to have scans of that title on a website. Then mooch the scans from that site. You can print them yourself, or bribe a friend with a nice printer to do that for you.

• Now you can put up a webpage, or join a CD-R Trading ring, or e-mail people, offering what you have as trade-bait. Doesn't matter if you originally got your discs from someone else... all that matters is that you'd obtained them fairly and squarely, and now they're part of your collection. You will eventually get "nibbles"... people who want to trade with you. So, from these nibbles, more boots get added to your collection, which can be used to obtain even more boots. Notice that now, being a novice player, you can now trade 1 for 1: one boot disc for one boot disc.

• Cast your net wide. It's not a good idea to specialize in only one artist- that limits your potential trading partners to only fans of that particular artist. That could be a problem once you try to get something by a different artist. "Everybody" loves the Beatles, or at least, knows someone who loves the Beatles. So make sure you have at least a few titles by hugely popular artists- sticking with low-sales, cult artists only marginalizes you and your collection.

• Do not ever add in-print, commercial CDs to your trade list. You don't want to be a slimy CD pirate. Your intent is not to take money away from artists. The recording industry already howls over bootleggers and non-commercially released live shows. Don't give them ammo to group "CD-R traders" with "CD pirates". And do not ask for money for your boots.

• If you are using a computer, burn your discs as "disc at once". That means that the dupe will play all the way through, with no dreaded 2 second gap between songs (the gaps annoy players). You would get consistently better results by copying your original disc to the hard drive, and then doing "disc at once" to copy from hard drive to a blank.

• Once you dupe your discs and you're ready to mail them, do not write on the physical discs. Players hate that, they're quite content to make their own labels.

• Do not mail your discs in jewel cases. Players usually avoid cases- they crack if manhandled by the Post Office, and then the disc could even be damaged by the pieces of the broken case! Your disc will be better off mailed in a paper CD envelope or Case-Logic sleeve, sandwiched between 2 pieces of corrugated cardboard inside of a larger, heavy-duty manila envelope.

Related Pages:
The Bootleg Manifesto

This article is Copyright 2001, K.F. Louie. May not be reproduced without the written permission of the author.
Got questions? Or do you have something interesting to trade? Write to me at:

ZMOQ

There's no place like HOME