Kanye’s Graduation, Yeezus, and The Life Of Pablo - all widely beloved albums, mind you - still haven’t dropped on vinyl. Other artists, or the aforementioned artists with their other albums, for their acclaimed work simply can’t be bothered to press actual records. In its first year of release, bootlegs of Beyonce’s Lemonade flooded the market thankfully, with deluxe packaging, the official release made up for the wait. KIDS SEE GHOSTS’ self-titled album, The Weeknd’s My Dear Melancholy, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly, and J Cole’s KOD during those 6-month to 2-year waits all received unofficial vinyl pressings. Labels usually follow digital drops a few months later with physical releases, although further delays often occur. Nobody can manufacture and distribute thousands of vinyl copies in 2 weeks, much less 2 hours. To prevent leaks, artists nowadays often submit (or even finish) their albums mere days before release. Some current bootlegs capitalize on genuine release delays.
Many popular recent releases, particularly in the hip-hop world, either don’t get a real vinyl release or experience massive delays, letting bootleggers fill the gap. Still, some of these newer, younger collectors’ lack of immediate knowledge makes them vulnerable to bootleggers (others are aware of certain releases’ unofficial nature, but for tangibility buy anyway). We all start there in some way, and about the intricacies of the long playing record, eventually learn (or lose our minds). They buy records as collectors’ items to have physical copies of their favorite albums, maybe to hang on their wall, to tangibly interact with the art. What can the bootleggers do now? As vinyl resurges in popularity, newcomers who love the format but know little about its technicalities (not necessarily a bad thing) arrive in droves. And because amateur tapers beat the “real” record labels to the live album game, how were fans supposed to tell the difference? Now, leaked material is blatantly obvious current live bootlegs’ jackets don’t have TMOQ’s neat uniformity, and streaming services now (with some error) distinguish official studio albums from crowdfunded leaks. To audiences with little information access, TMOQ’s stamped covers didn’t look especially dubious after all, official releases soon followed the bootleggers’ aesthetic. During vinyl’s peak, labels including the infamous Trademark Of Quality (TMOQ) sold unauthorized live albums and leaks of the era’s rock artists, capitalizing on fans’ hunger for any new material. Yeezus on vinyl?! A promo? For real? Uhhhh, no.Įnter the modern vinyl bootleg market. The jacket shows Virgil Abloh’s iconic album package design, a red-taped CD case, cropped and blown up to a 12” square. All of the widely distributed Kanye LPs appear, but of his 2013 cinematic masterpiece Yeezus, a “FOR PROMOTIONAL USE ONLY” copy appears. You enter a record store and alphabetically dig through the rap LPs.
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