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  Bootleg
Synonyms: bootlegging
Terminology | Dictionary | Explanation

A bootleg is an illegally recorded and pressed record. Most bootleg releases are live recordings and sometimes studio out-takes. The name comes from people who hid a microphone in their boots. Unauthorized recordings can be traced back to the early days of opera, jazz, and blues music. Early live recordings typically contained a great deal of crowd noise, with screams and whistles from audience members close to the microphone sometimes drowning out the performance. Bootleggers gradually found ways to minimize this, sometimes just by choosing their position in the crowd carefully, by elevating the microphone above the crowd on an extensible pole, or by taping it to a light or speaker pole. Others found ways to connect recording equipment directly into the Front of House mixing console or soundboard, with or without the cooperation of the performer's sound crew.

History
The first recognised rock bootleg in the United States was a double-LP known as The Great White Wonder, for the plain white cover, sleeve and labels. During the 1970s the bootleg industry in the United States expanded rapidly, coinciding with the era of stadium or arena rock. Vast numbers of recordings were issued for profit by bootleg labels such as Kornyfone and Trade Mark of Quality. The large followings of bands such as Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd created a lucrative market for the mass production of unofficial recordings on vinyl, as it became evident that more and more fans were willing to purchase them. In addition, the huge crowds which turned up to these concerts made the effective policing of the audience for the presence of recording equipment virtually impossible.

Throughout the 1970s most bootleg records were of poor quality, with many of the album covers consisting of nothing more than cheap photocopies. However, later in the decade a number of unofficial "labels" such as Swinging Pig emerged in Europe, which released limited editions of better quality recordings, with improved album artwork. This trend in enhanced audio and packaging standards continued into the 1980s. The 1980s saw the increased use of audio cassettes and videotapes for the dissemination of bootleg recordings, as the affordability of private dubbing equipment made the production of multiple copies significantly easier. Cassettes were also smaller, easier to ship, and could be sold or traded more affordably than vinyl.

In the 1990s there was a widespread conversion of many of the older bootlegs onto the compact disc format. Unofficial recordings became more readily available than ever before, resulting in thousands of bootlegs being circulated on CD amongst avid collectors and fans, in many cases of shows which had been originally recorded over thirty years previously. The tightening of laws and increased enforcement by police on behalf of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and other industry groups—often for peripheral issues such as tax evasion—gradually drove the distributors of for-profit vinyl and CD bootlegs further underground. Physical bootlegging largely shifted to less regulated countries such as Hong Kong, Russia, and Brazil, with the results distributed through existing underground channels. The rise of standard audio file formats such as MP3 combined with the ability to share files between computers made it simpler than ever for bootleg collectors to exchange rarities. Older analog recordings were converted to digital format for the first time, tracks from bootleg CDs were ripped to computer hard disks, and new material was created with digital recording of various types, and all of these types could now be easily shared. 		 
     





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