At one point it was extremely easy and convenient to purchase Sailormoon music CD's online.  There were a number of sources in the USA that would handle the importing and acted as retail storefronts for North American moonies, namely sailormoonstore.com.  Most of the CD's they sold fell into a bit of a gray area as they were not manufactured in Japan but rather in Taiwan.  SonMay and Ever Anime are two Taiwanese companies that have produced a ton of anime CD's, the bulk of which are what you find when looking for a soundtrack album outside of Japan.

Are these bootlegs?  No.  Are they originals?  No.  They are professionally manufactured CD's that are licensed for sale and use in Taiwan, with proper royalties paid in some instances.  As the manufacture cost is lower due to them being created for the mass market, most importers around the world would purchase these releases, which is why you used to see so much SonMay stuff in the supply channel.  Comic stores and the like tend to stock the SonMay and Ever Anime releases because that's what is available to them at a realistic price, rather than the much more expensive Japanese releases that are created in smaller quantities for the Japanese market.  Most retailers didn't know the difference since to them an import is an import.

What's the real difference?  The Japanese releases are manufactured for the niche Japanese collector, which means smaller quantities and higher prices.  The Taiwanese releases are manufactured for the mass market, which means to make as many as possible for the lowest price per unit possible.  Many more copies are pressed and the lower production cost and higher production yield means you would pay about ten to twelve dollars an album back when these were released.  The cheaper production and import cost of a Taiwanese music album is why you can pick them up for the equivalent price of a domestic music album.

Plain and simple, there it is.

Audio quality between Japanese and Taiwanese releases is usually nearly indistinguishable.  Really the drop in quality is usually in the form of the case insert and booklet, which are usually less colorful and printed on lower grade media.  However as time rolled on the Taiwanese manufacturers also bumped up their quality in this respect, with some releases almost looking verbatim to the Japanese originals.

I personally had no problem with SonMay or Ever Anime CD's.  They allowed me to purchase the music I wanted, from sellers I could find, at a price that made sense.  I do however have a problem with people that attempt to sell Taiwanese albums for the same price as a Japanese release.  Bottom line, a Taiwanese release is worth about ten bucks.  It will only ever be worth about ten bucks at most.  While some Japanese releases will continue to climb in value.  Japanese releases are for the collector's market, Taiwanese releases are for the market that wants an easy and affordable way to get the soundtrack into their hands.  (A good amount of this information was originally learned from the long defunct online newsletter ANIMEfringe)

Here I have scans of the Sailormoon CD's currently in my collection.  With the advent of some awesome Sailormoon music websites I slowly gave away my Sailormoon CD's over the years with the exception of the first three I ever purchased.  I still keep an eye out for more albums when out and about but my anime purchasing has scaled way down over the years.

Pretty Soldier Sailormoon Sailorstars Best Song Collection (SonMay)
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Pretty Soldier Sailormoon Complete Vocal Collection Vol. 1 (SonMay)
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Pretty Soldier Sailormoon Complete Vocal Collection Vol. 2 (SonMay)
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