Obi (publishing)
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An Obi strip is a strip of thin paper looped around the left side or sometimes made of thicker paper folded over the top of Japan pressed LP albums. It is also found folded over the left side of music CDs, video games, DVD's and even on the covers of books when the are sold new.
The features of the obi include the title of the product usually in phonetic Japanese, the track listings, other information pertaining to it, such as price, catalog number and other related releases or artists from that same record company.
The obi's main purpose was so that consumers knew what the contents of the album was and for the store owner to use for re-ordering. Back when vinyl was the main medium for recorded music, most new records in Japan were packaged with obis on them which of course had the title and all the other info, but on the back there was a tab with the catalog number that the store owner or cashier would cut off when it was sold to a customer so he would know what to re-order.
Then came along CDs, they too have obis but they are not for reordering because you can't cut anything off it it as the CD is sealed. All the stores now keep track of things with the register and computers for re-ordering.
The correct term for obi is actually TASUKI which means "ribbon". Non-native Japanese speaking record buyers/collectors in the 1960s and 70's who didn't know that the correct word for the "obi" was called tasuki started calling the tasuki "obis" because of the way they are wraped around the record like the sashes worn with kimonos and martial arts uniforms.
The Japanese store owners and workers all called them tasukis, but when the foreigners started referring to them as obi the Japanese followed suit and called them obi's as well.
Products that feature an obi strip have become desirable among collectors from around the world. Because many Japanese consumers discarded the obi once purchased and of course some took great care in preventing damage to the obi. An old record or CD with the obi still attached can fetch premium prices on the second hand/collectors market. As a rule of thumb, a record or CD with the obi strip intact is always worth more than one without one. Whenever a Japanese pressing of a CD by a Western artist is exported to other countries for sale in retail outlets (or offered for sale via online retail outlets) becomes available, the obi can dictate the value of that CD. If it's new/sealed it should have an obi, providing it came with one (some Japanese releases feature an information sticker instead of an obi). A used/second hand CD with the obi still with the CD is usually worth more than any other countries standard domestic pressing.
Recently, Taiwanese perpetrators have been imitating the Japanese tradition by using paper title strips on their releases CDs of western artist's CDs, which are actually EU or US imports (since no CDs are pressed in Taiwan) that are repackaged in Taiwan with their printed in Taiwanese (all kanji with no katakana or hiragana) title strips.
Some Korean cds feature a type of obi as well but most feature a sticker in Korean. An obi is a term that is unique to Japan only. The obi-like strips on Taiwan, Korean or even USA or EU CDs technically cannot be called obi, They are whatever title strips are called in their respective native language.[citation needed]