Did music lovers "pirate" vinyl records? Pirating can mean copying, recording, duplicating, however possible, to acquire the music without buying it and without giving up the original record. The information I've found online relies on the technology of today. I'm not interested in pirating records now and have no intention of trying. I'm asking if vinyls were pirated and how it was done when they were popular years ago.
gofar99 Messages: 1959 Registered: May 2010 Location: Southern Arizona
Illuminati (5th Degree)
Hi, I suspect some were pirated and replicas made, but most folks used tape recorders to copy LPs. A good tape machine could make a copy that would be very hard to tell from the original. Often individuals would copy the LPs on the first play and just use the tape and thus preserve the record. Also specialized tapes were made that only had the tracks on them that you liked.
Wayne Parham Messages: 18801 Registered: January 2001
Illuminati (33rd Degree)
That's how I always did it. Made a copy on reel-to-reel and on cassette. Made cassette copies for the car, reel-to-reel for best quality at home and rarely played the vinyl record. For me, it was (and still is) essentially an archival media.
Oh, I knew it! I knew my generation was not the first to prate material, yet I've never heard mention of that about other generations.
Wayne, thanks for mentioning that "specialized tapes were made that only had the tracks on them that you liked." That is the first I've heard of something like that being around before Walmart and Apple began selling individual songs rather than the whole album.
Gofar99, I always thought tapes sounded terrible, but I played my favorites into the ground, so that could be why.
Thank you both for responding! I've used some your key terms to fall down the google rabbit hole these past few days.
gofar99 Messages: 1959 Registered: May 2010 Location: Southern Arizona
Illuminati (5th Degree)
Tapes are not inferior....they are what nearly all the music was recorded on in studios until the last few years. A good reel to reel will astound you. Some high end cassette recorders were fairly good, but none IMO were to the R-R standard. Plain everyday cassette recorders were not all that great. Often noisy and with marginal response...they were the MP3 players of the day.
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