The street vendors are usually the small players of the black market, Ballato said. They work for bigger guys who either manufacture the illegal merchandise or purchase it wholesale from small-time operators. But as long as there is demand for it, the piracy is hard to stop. And most the time, illegal merchants make more money than the individual record storeowner does. And now, they re getting into CDs.
Competition is fierce among the pirates and record shops.
They make a lot of money when they make their own mixes. Illegal vendors will re-record several hit songs, put them under one label and sell it as one package. Nine times out of 10, they have no permission from the record company, Cervantes said. There are several ways that a buyer can tell if an audiocassette is counterfeited. That includes the price being too low, the absence of a sealed plastic wrapper, lackluster color on the cover, and the lack of a recording company name or label on the cassette itself.