What makes fake demo tapes look different from real ones:
- To start off with, all publicly known, authentic Rammstein demo tapes under Motor Music have no print at all on the plastic case of the actual tapes themselves, or stickers. Until proven otherwise, any Motor Music demo tape with any kind of white print or with stickers is to be considered fake.
- On authentic Motor Music Vorabcassettes, there are two coloured lines at the top of the artwork J-Card. The bottom, silver one cannot be replicated by bootleggers, so they sometimes leave these strips coloured in olive green, or even reddish brown colourations. You will only find this on fake tapes, and even some fake Motor Music information sheets, such as those seen in fake "Konzert - Demo" VHS promos.
- The Motor Music emblem normally seen faded behind the tracklist of the cassette's J-Cards are normally more clean-looking on fake tapes, due to the type of paper used in the authentic tapes' J-Cards. Real tapes should feature grainy-looking artwork, with a texture comparable to that of regular paper. Fake tape artwork is generally printed on cleaner-looking printer paper.
- On either the left or right hand sides of the J-Card, there should (if the J-Card artwork isn't a black variant, typically photocopied like the example provided) be a series of small perforations where the industrial printer used to cut the original J-Cards has created a cutout pattern. This is not present on fake tape inlays.
- Certain fake cassette tapes are double-panelled, meaning they have an extra length of paper on the J-Card which folds inward. On the only fake tapes to feature this extra length, with the exception of the fake 8-track demo tape, the entire tracklist only appears on the top-half, rendering the bottom segment useless. Tapes with these features are fakes; even if any of the demo tapes used double-panel J-Cards, the dividing line between the two segments would have a similar pattern to the cutout pattern mentioned before, albeit only slightly indented in to the paper.
- The text on most of the authentic 1994/1995 Motor Music Vorabcassette J-Cards is Dot-Matrix printed upon the previously-mentioned pre-printed J-Cards, meaning that at the time, Motor Music wouldn't have released promo tapes with text that looks like it was printed on normally. Some tapes do feature printed fonts, so this should only be deemed suspicious if any of the other listed criteria are met.
- In ALL instances of fake demo tapes that have been observed, the spine of the J-Card (the thin segment where the tape's title is shown) is bent harshly in such a way that it perfectly fits in to the cassette case, some fakes even having a clear, dark line printed exactly where the crease coincides. Real tapes do not have this, and instead rest in a curved fashion against the inside of the case.
- Finally, when compared to other instances of real Motor Music Vorabcassettes, the "Motor" text at the top of some fake demo Vorabcassettes' J-Cards will appear larger than they do on real tapes. Due to all of these common factors, it is entirely possible, and even a major consideration that the majority of these fake demo tapes originated from the same person; an eBay scammer who manufactured them all. This cannot be 100% proven, but it is a likely scenario, due to the examples given.