Generic artwork may be used instead of photographs or pictures of the recording group or artist. Unfamiliar or fictitious company names of alleged manufacturers or distributors are often listed or no company names are listed at all. Bootleg recordings are the unauthorized recording of a musical broadcast on radio or television or of a live concert. Still found in long playing vinyl album format, occasionally in cassette format and increasingly in CD format. Name or trademark of the performer's legitimate record company is not included, but names of fictitious manufacturers often are.
Consumers are the ultimate victims of sound piracy.
Most illegal recordings are inferior in sound quality, often defective and sometimes are of an artist other than the one represented on the packaging. And as illegal recordings cannot be or exchanged, the consumer is stuck with the inferior product. In addition, the financial loss incurred by record companies, as a result of piracy, ultimately drives up the price of legitimate product. Retailers and distributors lose sales to pirates because they cannot compete with the low prices charged for cheaply-produced, illegal copies. In some cities, illegal street vendors sell counterfeit cassettes literally on the doorsteps of legitimate retailers.