Identifying fakes

With cassette piracy being rampant in the 80s and 90s, fake tapes are an inevitability in war music, especially as a result of the hyperinflated economy in wartime Yugoslavia.

Fake tapes (most commonly known as "bootlegs") are somewhat of a mixed blessing for collectors. Obviously the authenticity of the material is destroyed since the tape, j-card and labels are not genuine, but it is possible to get higher quality audio from a fake tape than a real one. Some duplication houses (where albums were transferred from their masters onto cassettes to be sold in stores) had notoriously bad quality control, producing cheap tapes that while authentic, are nearly impossible to find in good condition.

On the other hand, bootlegs have the possibility of being recorded onto higher quality consumer tapes (cassettes produced and sold in the consumer market for the sole purpose of home recording). That means it is possible to have a fake tape that is effectively a "snapshot" of an undegraded tape from the 90's. A bootleg could theoretically give you higher quality audio than an original version of the tape, especially if found today as many of the originals have degraded.

To be clear, bootlegs are a gamble and can be wildly inconsistent, but sometimes a bootleg of a rare album is much better than not having the album at all.

This article will provide ways of identifying bootlegs, and will show what to look for if you believe a tape is fake.

Identifying fakes by cover

Here you can see the distinct shine when held angled to a light

The easiest step in identifying a fake cassette is also the first thing you see, the cover.

The most obvious indicator of a fake tape is the colors of the printed J-card. Fake tapes will either have washed out, very pale colors or be extremely vibrant and bright. It is also possible that blacks and other darker colors will have an odd sheen to them that contrasts from the otherwise matte paper when put under a light source. In some cases, the color will be missing entirely and you'll get a monochrome cover, or black with whatever odd color paper the cover was printed on.

On most genuine cassette covers, the paper will have a general sheen across the entire card, and won't have parts that look matte while others reflect light.

Fine lines on fake tapes will often appear blurry. This is easy to notice on letters and graphics, but can also affect the main cover photo. Blur on cards is easier to notice in person, because scanning nearly any J-card can introduce blur in some areas. If you notice blur on the J-card as you hold it, that's a sign of a fake tape.

Speaking of lines, you may also see odd and faded parallel lines that cut through the entire J-card, indicating it was printed on a poorly calibrated inkjet printer.

A fake Zbogom oružje. Notice the very vibrant colors, blurry image and excess white at the edges

In terms of macro photography or on a scanner level, the dots that make up the picture on a genuine J-card will look much different than the grainy, coherent texture of a card that was produced by an inkjet. The text and logos on real J-cards will often be much sharper than pictures, so if your letters don't look clear in your scanner, you may have a fake.

Since fake J-cards were cut by hand most of the time, it is not rare to see white edges of blank paper around the perimeter of the card. In some cases, this can make the card too big for the case giving a crinkled or bent look when putting it back in. There are also imperfect cuts in which there are missing parts of the cover due to being cut at an odd and inconsistent angle. Improper borders don't necessarily guarantee a tape is fake, but they are an additional feature to look for if you are already noticing some of the aforementioned signs.

The last obvious indicator is when the design of the cover changes. While some authentic copies did have alternate covers between reissues of the same album, it was a fairly rare practice outside of releases by a foreign distributor, releases by state media labels, and reissues between different label which was already uncommon to begin with. Another dead giveaway in this regard is when the back off a J-card is completely blank with no text. Very rarely genuine albums have been found without text on the back of their J-cards, but these are usually obscure releases by smaller independent labels and not by any prominent labels like RTS, Jugodisk, and Jugoton.

Cassettes

A fake Srbin je ponos. The cassette itself has an entirely different label than any genuine copy. Also the printing of the blank TDK tape used for the bootleg can be seen to the right

As cassette labels are hard to scan, bootlegs often lack sharpness and detail. This can be seen in letters having gaps in them or by being very blurry. To avoid that, bootleggers sometimes opt to remake the tape labels, creating a new design. These ones are very obvious to spot as they differ substantially to known originals. They can lack rights texts, relevant information like publishers, logos, catalog numbers and can use different typefaces or side indicators. In some cases bootleggers will have their own sophisticated label templates for the cassette labels. For example some Srpski Talibani bootlegs have an "In Moorton Benson" text with a logo of two seahorses over a fake catalog number, a template used for many bootlegs of various albums. The color is also a big indicator as most genuine releases have labels printed on white paper while a majority of bootlegs will print genuine graphics on bright colors like red or yellow.

The cassette used for bootlegs can often vary. Very rarely they are recorded over actual blank cassettes from factories, making them look more official. A lot of times it will be recorded over a blank consumer cassette. This will be visible, for example when shining a flashlight at the cassette and seeing the pad printed text of the blank cassette (logos, side indicator, etc.) coming through the paper labels. If that is the case, the tape length can also exceed the albums length, creating way too much blank space with just noise after the songs of the side end. It is also common for bootleg cassettes to be taped over other official releases. This can either be seen by bootleg labels being glued on the previous labels, or over a previously pad printed release.

Hall of Shame

Here we will showcase some of the bootleg tapes that have wound up in our collections, to help show you more examples so you know what to look out for.

Brano Trifković - Srbin je ponos

Notes

• Recorded over a 1990 TDK cassette
• White on the bottom of the J-card
• Blurry cover
• Saturated colors
• Different cassette label

Baja Mali Knindža - Zbogom Oružje

Notes

Blurry cover

Heavily saturated colors

Different cassette label

Lepi Mića - Republiko Srpska

Notes

Cover printed with an ink jet printer

Back of the J-card blank

Very sticky and thick cardstock

Very blurry cover

Genuine cassette label design, but with different colors

Niko nema što Srbin imade

Notes

j-card is made with two pieces of paper

Cover is smaller than usual and printed on laminated cardstock

The cover design is creased in the incorrect spot and is the incorrect size

Print quality is indicative of a commercial printer

Cassette labels look messy as if photocopied from an actual cassette

Unconventional cassette shell and label colors.