You may have seen in the news recently that a vinyl pirate was jailed for three-and-a-half years after police seized the largest haul of counterfeit records ever found in the UK. The man made a whopping £2.7 million between 2017 and 2024 by selling knock-off versions of albums by Ed Sheeran, The Beatles and Taylor Swift, among others.
The counterfeiter used four 70-year-old vinyl presses to copy legit records at the industrial unit in Acton, west London. Police also found 3000 metal stampers and thousands of sleeves and centre labels.
In total, they seized 18 tonnes of evidence during the bust in 2024. The pirate was sentenced a couple of weeks ago.
According to City of London Police, the evidence pointed to "a long‑running, highly organised and entirely unlicensed manufacturing operation capable of producing counterfeit recordings at a scale rarely seen in the modern music industry."
Which suggests that counterfeit vinyl is a substantial problem.
Indeed, the issue is pretty widespread, according to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), who referred the case to the City of London Police's Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU). Speaking exclusively to What Hi-Fi?, Peter Ratcliffe, the BPI's Director of Content Protection, said that unfortunately the vinyl format was becoming a victim of its own success.
"After 18 consecutive years of growth in vinyl LP purchases in the UK (and likely to be 19 after this year), it's sadly inevitable that some people with more sinister motives will try to exploit this demand and the love people have for the format," he said.
Since 2025, Ratcliffe’s unit has seized 600,000 units with an estimated value of around £8 million – and that's not including the nearly £3 million worth seized during the Acton raid in 2024.
A pretty bleak picture, then. But there are some glimmers of hope.
The BPI has been scoring "some notable successes" Ratcliffe said, "thanks in part to improved field intelligence and operational processes as well as greater industry collaboration."
He added that "we hope the problem is now in decline or at least is becoming contained." Fingers crossed.
Stay well away
We would always advise against buying counterfeit vinyl, even if it is cheaper than the real thing. Not only is the sound quality usually worse, playing a knock-off record can actually damage your turntable. And that's before you get to the fact that it denies any earnings to everyone involved in creating and distributing the music, from the artists themselves, to everyone who works at the record label and in the independent record shops that we treasure so fondly.
Or, as Ratcliffe puts it, "fake vinyl (and CDs) denies artists and the record labels that support them significant revenues that rightly should go to them, while, of course, it also undermines the retail community and wider music ecosystem and cheats fans out of an authentic experience."
But perhaps most seriously of all, the "ill-gotten proceeds tend to fund other forms of criminality that can impact us all. It is far from being a harmless activity that we should turn a blind eye to."
So even if you're not a fan of the fat cats at major labels, you should still avoid buying counterfeit records.
Thankfully, they're pretty easily avoided, as long as you shop at the right places and exercise a bit of caution. You shouldn’t find any knock-off vinyl at your local independent record shop, for example. That’s because "In general, reputable record shops do not get approached by the counterfeiters," Mark Burgess, the owner of Flashback Records, told us. "The records are poor quality and illegal, so there is no incentive for us to buy them. You'll find these counterfeits at markets and boot fairs."
And if in doubt? You can always consult our guide on how to spot fake vinyl.
MORE:
How to spot fake records: a definitive guide
The best independent record shops in the UK – as chosen by you, the readers
The best turntables to play your (legit) records
