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Down the karaoke road

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rickgood

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For the past 2 years I've been running an in-house show with a business partner who is a long time KJ. We did 3 hours of karaoke each night and then a 3 hour dance party, 7 nights a week at a resort hotel bar. Since I was the DJ, I supplied the music and he supplied the karaoke tracks. I got most of my music from my PrimeCuts subscription with an occasional download of a cd or singles from Amazon or Itunes.

In April I decided I was tired of the 7 nights a week, out of town, gig and he stayed and hired another DJ. Of course, all the karaoke music was his and we ran probably one of maybe 3 legal shows in the whole area. Now I'm wanting to crank my karaoke business up here, but without spending a small fortune.

I purchased the Sweet Georgia Brown set, SuperCore 2008, 2009 and 2010, as well as ASK Party pack and Karaoke Hits set. So I have around 2800 songs total. I looked at the top 500 songs for karaoke for 2010 and so far I have about 175 of them. I know Sound Choice and Chartbuster are very active against folks without discs and I have none of their products. There are still thousands of karaoke tracks out there and, of course, the competition is stiff for locations here.

My questions is, who "polices" all the other brands, including the orphaned ones, from abuse. I know Sound Choice and Chartbuster have the best product but still plenty of choices. So even though guys aren't using the 2 brands, I'm still in the position of being undercut when other KJs don't buy ANY tracks, have liability insurance or a business license.

Looks like for the most part, it's still a wild west out there, just with them dropping the 2 brands from their catalog. Any comments?
 
First off some of the orphaned brands (like SGB, THM etc.) have already been picked up by one of the three manus involved in the "policing" of the karaoke (Sound Choice, Chartbuster and Stellar) I believe that eventually you will also see the overseas brands (Zoom, Sunfly, Easy etc.) doing the same thing as well. As well as picking up some of the defunct brands along the way, I heard that one of the three U.S. manus was looking to pick up DK as well, but don't know how that is proceeding, the last I heard is one of the manus that was trying to pick up pioneer but couldn't find out who actually owned them. There is no reason to avoid any of the manus unless the disc you are purchasing are counterfits, as long as you are purchasing the disc, if you have 1:1 you can request permission and through auditing get permission to use the products on a computer system. Eventually there will be very little left for pirates to use it may not happen this year but I don't see it too far off in the furture either.
 
That's interesting. While I see someone possibly buying maybe DK, where would the incentive be for Sunfly or Zoom, which seem to still be making money and releasing current tracks, to sell their inventory and future profits?

I think the biggest issue is that law enforcement in general has no interest in this situation. How many investigators and lawsuits can Sound Choice and Chartbuster possibly handle? I'm in Raleigh and we've been swept twice and I'm sure we will be again, but Myrtle Beach has possibly 3 or 4 legal shows and at least 40 regular illegal shows that freely advertise in local media. They've never been touched and there are hundreds of similar places.
 
So Rick, are you asking how to increase your library without the three main manufactures, and still have a well rounded library, or are you asking how to increase your library at the lowest cost?

Call me if you want. I'm in Raleigh too. (Well Cary...same thing).
 
Hey Skid,

I sung at one of your shows in Cary once back when you used rodents to power the mixer I think. Anyway, I guess I'm looking to just get a decent library without putting out a lot of money. I own the rights for the DJ Trivia franchise for Wake county and we have 10 shows a week that we do for that and Saturdays are mostly booked with weddings, pool parties, etc. but Friday nights are pretty empty - so I was looking to have that so Ryan (my son) and I could alternate working it.

I've hosted my share of "drunks on the mic" nights at the beach and although I want a decent quality product, I don't expect my shows will be command performances, but rather a good basic library for folks to have several choices.
 
KJ media Pro may be up your alley. At $1.99 a song if you buy just one credit at a time (less if buy in bucket loads) you can access the entire Chartbuster library. It might mean switching hosting solutions to Compuhost but that is one of the better hosting softwares to begin with.

You can literally run a show with the credits you buy and not be on the internet to receive your songs except when you're updating the restricted library with the latest releases. All the songs are already on the hard drive they send you. All you have to do is unlock the songs using credits you purchased ahead of time.
So night one you purchase enough credits to get you through the night. Your singers come up and ask you do you have such and such a song which happens to be locked on the drive. In just seconds you can unlock the song they asked for and be playng it. It's yours to keep for the rest of time.
 
Thanks for the info Danny, I'll check that out.
 
Depending on how you want to look at it right now you can't purchase a better or "cheaper" library that you can get from SC and CB than you can get through their digital releases.

The other alternative is the pirate way but in the end that won't be so cheap.

---------- Post added at 07:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:26 PM ----------
rickgood said:
That's interesting. While I see someone possibly buying maybe DK, where would the incentive be for Sunfly or Zoom, which seem to still be making money and releasing current tracks, to sell their inventory and future profits?

I think the biggest issue is that law enforcement in general has no interest in this situation. How many investigators and lawsuits can Sound Choice and Chartbuster possibly handle? I'm in Raleigh and we've been swept twice and I'm sure we will be again, but Myrtle Beach has possibly 3 or 4 legal shows and at least 40 regular illegal shows that freely advertise in local media. They've never been touched and there are hundreds of similar places.
Click to expand...

Not saying that Zoom or Sunfly would or wants to sell out their product. What I am saying is that they may see what is happening with SC, CB and PHM and decide that the way to go is to start pursuing those who are stealing from them as well, and there are orphan brands that they could puck up as well.
 
First off Rick, let me set the record straight. They weren't rats, they were gerbels.

Second for a quality, well rounded set of disks, I'd opt for the two Foundations from Sound Choice, or any of the Chartbuster Essentials. They're not all that expensive on Ebay. If you only want to pick and choose, to plug a few holes here and there without buying a whole set of disks, I've had very good luck with SBI Karaoke downloads. You can use them on your exhisting program, and SBI will allow you to use them in a show. Songs are only $3.00 each.
 
Thanks Skid! I'll check all that out - I don't even have a committed gig yet but want to be prepared when I get something. I'm talking to a few of my trivia venues about doing a once-a-month thing to get started.
 
Rick, this posting back and forth is getting old. We're both in the same area. Call me, or come by the show.
 
Rickgood, I personally would say to buy the new media pro from CB or the Gem series and top it off with the last 2 years of Pop hits sets (really reasonable now) for the newest stuff. I kinda think to CB media pro system is a innovative product if you use compuhost. Since compuhost wont play our converted LD's I will have to see if we can run it in the background just to unlock songs before it makes sense for us. The Gem series is Awsome!!!!! you get quality from the big 3 SC CB and Stellar( Pop Hits& Top Hits)

---------- Post added at 02:51 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:46 AM ----------

oh and Myrtle Beach might not have had any suits filed yet...but that doesnt mean investigators havent already been there gathering info...some of the investigations here in florida occured almost 2 years before any suits were filed
 
you know guys everybody seems to think that SC and CB like to keep spending $$ filing these suits...If you really think about it they have done everything possible to give the KJ's a much easier and cheaper way to get legal...I am POSITIVE SC would much rather go back to creating and selling new tracks than continuing with this B*llSH*t. Its the pirates that made the suits needed....Sc has hit I think 8 states now and I clearly understand they intend to keep going as long as needed....Florida alone has had 6 suits filed and more to come...and it is really starting to work at least in our area
 
Just too touch on the subject Sound Choice is already discussing a **** for tat deal with Zoom and Sunfly to police each others products in piracy situations and file suits if need be.
 
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