GEM Series appears!

[Bazza]

Really? Because Sound Choice has given me some pretty major discounts on some purchases already, and the GEM series is being offered at a major discount to everyone, yet you still complain!:sqwink:

OK. I see what I am dealing with. You are right, of course. I am wrong. Feel better?


Superiority complex
Those exhibiting the superiority complex have a self-image of supremacy. Those with superiority complexes are not concerned with the opinions of others. Those with a superiority complex may speak as if they are all-knowing and better than others. But ultimately they do not care if others think so or not, and will not care if others tell them so. They simply won't listen to, and don't care about, those who disagree.

 

[jclaydon]

Steve:there are several songs that will be available on the GEM series that are NOT available at all on CDG. Now I don't know if anyone else cares, but an example is most of the songs by the moody blues. Best versions ever made, in my opinion, and have been out of print for years..

Actually i just double checked and there are two eagles songs that currently aren`t available on CDG either.


My hope is that they will start making enough money again that they would be willing to re-open their custom CDG operation. That would make this whole convesation pretty much moot. But I have to be realistic, I know that isn`t going to happen any time soon..

 

[Sound Choice]

I would like to know if there are any songs not previously released on any sc disc.

No, all of these songs have been previously released on various Spotlight CDGs. We began with what we thought were the 10,000 best songs (out of the 18,000 we recorded over the last 25 years) and then continuously whittled down the list based on being able to obtain the licensing and fitting them together into some sort of coherent list. Unfortunately, for those who have already bought the Foundation and Bricks, the Diamond contains all 1500of those songs and an additional 1500 songs.

Since the Bricks, Foundations and Heavy Metal discs are our best sellers, we presume that most KJs begin with those songs and add on. The GEM Series really does not offer much to the legal host who already has a big collection of our discs. It is geared to the 5-10% of legal hosts who would like to add on and start a new system (maybe taking over a gig from a pirate??) or to the KJ who has been operating illegally and wants to get legal and avoid getting sued; they will also be used as the sets of discs offered in settlement of a lawsuit with Sound Choice rather than CDGs which would requiring ripping again.

They will be available under a license agreement and will provide the owner a level of protection against being pirated by their own employees and something that they can use to prove they are legal and can pass along (with certain limitations) if they want to sell their business.

 

[Sound Choice]

Steve:there are several songs that will be available on the GEM series that are NOT available at all on CDG. Now I don't know if anyone else cares, but an example is most of the songs by the moody blues. Best versions ever made, in my opinion, and have been out of print for years..

Actually i just double checked and there are two eagles songs that currently aren`t available on CDG either.


My hope is that they will start making enough money again that they would be willing to re-open their custom CDG operation. That would make this whole convesation pretty much moot. But I have to be realistic, I know that isn`t going to happen any time soon..

We will not be opening the Custom CDG site because it has not been operated by us for years (although we provided technical service for it and payment collection). However, the Australian company (Clark Music) which had been operating it is trying to negotiate rights to the music again and we will provide trademark branding rights. We are trying to argue on their behalf the value of doing custom CDGs (or possibly MP3Gs) so that the "holes" in the available CDGs from Sound Choice or the GEM series can be filled and missing favorites can be legally obtained. (Australian licensing allows basically all the songs to be licensed and the APRA/AMCOS Rights Society there is not worried about direct sales to out of country individual buyers.)

Hopefully the rights can be licensed again and the site operating in three months or so (but I have no control over this, so don't quote me on any timing).

 

[Sound Choice]

Why not wait until the disc are offically released before making ignorant comments about them!

Why would you buy them if you were simply going to resell them at a loss on ebay (just doesn't make any sense at all)

Why not just buy what you need or want on the regular CDG disc? There is a whole list of them available, no one is forcing you to buy GEM sets that more or less mirror the foundations 1 & 2 and the bricks!

Additiionally the GEM series are LICENSED to the individual or company - there is no legal "reselling" of them and both the seller and prospective buyer of them would be in violation of the license agreement and could not operate legally. Especially the seller - how could you even operate a hard disc system from CDGs without maintaining 1:1, which (paraphrasing here) states that you must maintain posession of the original disc if you do a media shift.

 

[Sound Choice]

So what eagles songs are on the Gem set that you do not have?

Not sure about this but i think you can also purchgase the individual Gem Disc as well?

At this point we did not intend to license the individual GEM Series. We did hope that the Custom CDG site operated by Clark Music out of Australia would be up shortly (in the next three months??) and people could once again use that to "fill the holes". The good thing about that is that you could pick and chose exactly the songs you wanted and would not have to buy complete discs like you would with CDGs from Sound Choice. The bad thing is that the songs would cost more on a per song basis.

If the site does come back up, make sure you keep all receipts and the original custioms CDG in case of future audits.

 

[jclaydon]

We will not be opening the Custom CDG site because it has not been operated by us for years (although we provided technical service for it and payment collection). However, the Australian company (Clark Music) which had been operating it is trying to negotiate rights to the music again and we will provide trademark branding rights. We are trying to argue on their behalf the value of doing custom CDGs (or possibly MP3Gs) so that the "holes" in the available CDGs from Sound Choice or the GEM series can be filled and missing favorites can be legally obtained. (Australian licensing allows basically all the songs to be licensed and the APRA/AMCOS Rights Society there is not worried about direct sales to out of country individual buyers.)

Hopefully the rights can be licensed again and the site operating in three months or so (but I have no control over this, so don't quote me on any timing).

Kurt:thank you for clearing that up. I had never realized that the custom site was a completely separate entity that was not controlled by Soundchoice. However since you are negotiating on their behalf, If the possibility exists I would vote for both choices. A Digital kj could get EXACTLY what they wanted without the hassle of ripping and the people who are still using CDGs would not be left out.

Either way i have ALWAYs kept all my receipts for my custom orders.

 

[Bazza]

It is geared to the 5-10% of legal hosts who would like to add on and start a new system (maybe taking over a gig from a pirate??) or to the KJ who has been operating illegally and wants to get legal and avoid getting sued

Kurt:

Thank you very much for joining in the thread. I totally understand the 2nd Rig/Get Legal aspect of the GEM series...for those people it makes perfect sense.

But why are you only targeting this 5-10% of the potential KJ market? Why not use the exact same product to target 100%?! Since you already have the licensing in place, how hard would it be to simply re-package a sub-set of these same songs in an "Everything Else" set for the rest of us? Then you have covered all the bases, make everyone happy and YOU sell even more sets! I can't fathom a downside.

I will be buying the Emerald/Sapphires, but just can't see buying the big Diamond set as I already own half with your Foundations/Bricks and cannot justify re-buying them just to get the rest.

I look forward to your reply & thanks again! I love that the Manu's hang out here.

 

[Sound Choice]

Gem series pricing

Which is probably why they sell for less per song than the CDGs do!

Part of the rationale of the pricing is that 90% of the KJs today are running a great deal of (if not all) pirated songs and the practical aspect of the pricing is that we are competing against "free". While that might seem "unfair" to those who bought CDGs at full price and/or would like to see us put the pirates out of business, THAT topic has been covered in another thread here. Anything that increases the operating costs for the pirates is bound to help create a more level playing field - and that's all we can really "force".

Further, the pricing makes it much easier for current legitimate and legal hosts to buy new sets and be able to take away business (under threat of a lawsuit against the venue) from pirates. So legal hosts can benefit from the reduced pricing as well. And the easier we make it to become legitimate, then the harder we are going to make it on pirates who now have no excuses to becoming legit other than they simply prefer to be thieves.

The other large factor in the pricing is the VOLUME discount - we recognize that someone buying a library of songs (3000 - 6000 songs) would expect it and we agree to grant a discount for such a volume purchase. It's an extension of the pricing discounts on the Foundation and Bricks - the larger the set, the greater the discount, which you can see in the table on our site. There are even additional discounts for adding on CDGs - the pricing structure is based on total # of songs purchased.

 

[Sound Choice]

Kurt:

Thank you very much for joining in the thread. I totally understand the 2nd Rig/Get Legal aspect of the GEM series...for those people it makes perfect sense.

But why are you only targeting this 5-10% of the potential KJ market? Why not use the exact same product to target 100%?! Since you already have the licensing in place, how hard would it be to simply re-package a sub-set of these same songs in an "Everything Else" set for the rest of us? Then you have covered all the bases, make everyone happy and YOU sell even more sets! I can't fathom a downside.

I will be buying the Emerald/Sapphires, but just can't see buying the big Diamond set as I already own half with your Foundations/Bricks and cannot justify re-buying them just to get the rest.

I look forward to your reply & thanks again! I love that the Manu's hang out here.

We're the only manufacturer that even visits any of the Boards and Chat sites. And sometimes I have to question my own intellligence in doing so, LOL. But there are things to learn and I try to be open minded. I did read through your earlier posts including your replies to Thunder and will be considering your input.

You might have misunderstood our "target" market - the GEM Series was primarily aimed at the 90-95% of the market that have never owned or do not own many Sound Choice CDGs. And the 5-10% that do have large libraries of Sound Choice discs and are legal, could add on a second rig, knowing that they can be more aggressive in reclaiming lost shows from pirates. So the complete sets really could hit about 95% plus of the KJ market. It's the few hosts that might have recently started with the Bricks and Foundations and were slowly building on with Spotlight CDGs that we might not have the optimum solution for.

As for "repackaging" the Diamond into a different subset, the songs were put on discs by year and genre in the event that we do sell individual discs in the future to home consumers, who are more interested in a narrower selection of song genre and year. Since the songs were licensed on a per disc basis, it is way too costly to relicense the discs and repress them to create a bunch of smaller subsets. And unfortunately, for your situation, the Foundation and Bricks songs were not concentrated into a discrete set of 50 discs (1500 songs), so that the Diamond could be split in half.

How long have you had your Bricks and Foundations? Did you immediately format/media shift them so that there is no wear and tear on them?

 

[Sound Choice]

Gee, let me rush right out and buy something that displays a Sound Choice trademark....NOT!

Let me ante up a pre-payment for a product that doesn't yet exist - from a manufacturer who's going to send low lifes to the bars looking for lawsuits .....NOT!



A lot of bogus speculation and wishful legal opinion, not fact. Maybe someday SC will stop treating KJs with such contempt - and maybe someday I will actually buy one of their products ....NOT!

If you are using Sound Choice (or any other manufacturers') songs that you have not paid for, you are the last person who should be describing investigators as "low lifes". Simply put you would be a thief.

If you do use purchased CDGs that you have format/media shifted, but have chosen not to purchase Sound Choice products (for whatever reason, but I suspect it would be budgetary, not song selection or quality), then you are not our target customer anyway. (And for a definition of "customer", find the posts between Sound Choice and JoeChartruese where this topic was discussed).

And we do not have "contempt" for legal KJs - only those pirates who make a living stealing our property without any remorse and more often with a sense of entitlement. Fortunately, not all "pirates" have such disdain for fairness and we would prefer to treat all defendants as future customers, however it's their own attitude that determines the tone of the relationship. We only expect to get paid for what has been stolen from us - and surprisingly we are making it as easy and cost effective as possible to do so.

With the introduction of the MP3G series, at huge discounts and manufacturer financing, it is now easy and relatively inexpensive to become legal.

Contrary to your assertion, we are quite accomodating to those who have stolen from us. If they don't take advantage of the opportunity to get legal now, it is not Sound Choice who is showing contempt for a segment of the Karaoke Market, but the "pirate KJ" who would be showing contempt towards the manufacturers. And on what basis? Because they might be asked (or made) to pay for something they have stolen?

The additional discount was/is an opportunity to save even more money to get legal. If it takes filing continued lawsuits to "wake up" a few more pirates, then that is what we will have to continue to do.

On the other hand we have quite a number of KJs who are currently not legal, but are really interested in becoming legal and looking forward to the launch of the Series. And they are also smart enough to be interested in taking advantage of the additional savings.

 

[Sound Choice]

OK thanks.

A set that contains 50 discs would be cheaper to manufacture than a set that contains 100 discs... yes producing a set that contains more songs per disc would require less discs hence it is cheaper to produce.

This is a thread about the GEM series which is sold only as sets.

The 30 songs per disc was a licensing limitation. Memory-wise the CD-ROMs how about 760 Meg of data and a single sided DVD can hold 4.8 gig.

And relative to the costs of the licensing, the cost of the physical disc is only a fraction of the total cost, so there is not a lot of cost savings by putting more content on the disc.

Although they are not legal for Commercial use, a legal (for personal home use) karaoke download costs between $1.49 and $1.99 a song and can you imagine the inconvenience of downloading 3000 MP3G songs (that would also probably be at 192 kbps at best. So in comparison to those prices and delivery methods/timing, the GEM Series is a bargain and a much more efficient delivery method.

 

[Bazza]

We're the only manufacturer that even visits any of the Boards and Chat sites. And sometimes I have to question my own intellligence in doing so, LOL.

I have been asking the same question of myself lately.:sqlaugh:

But there are things to learn and I try to be open minded. I did read through your earlier posts including your replies to Thunder and will be considering your input.

Excellent. Hopefully you understood what I was trying to say better than he did!

unfortunately, for your situation, the Foundation and Bricks songs were not concentrated into a discrete set of 50 discs (1500 songs), so that the Diamond could be split in half.

That IS unfortunate, as that was my next suggestion...a "Diamond 1" and "Diamond 2". Oh well...

How long have you had your Bricks and Foundations? Did you immediately format/media shift them so that there is no wear and tear on them?

About half were bought new, ripped and put away mint (Foundation 2 and bricks 4/5). My Foundation 1 set, and other three bricks were bought used and while playable, aren't in the best of shape...so I am about 50/50.

I am very glad that you have taken my comments as contructive criticism and not simply "complaining" as others have. We are all in the sales & marketing game...just different sides of the fence. Regardless, it looks like I have no choice at this point. If later I decide to get the Diamond box, I will have to suck up the dupes and then try to sell off the discs.

Thanks again for your response.

 

[Sound Choice]

I agree 100%. BUT they could do BOTH! They can package them up any way they want and sell to both crowds. It's just a matter of burning the discs, which they will undoubtedly be doing in house. Heck, for an added fee they could even do "ala carte".

For them, I am sure the idea is "Make them buy the whole set in order to get the ones they really want". I am sure some will, but many more will say forget it...it's lost revenue. It's the same mentality record companies had regarding Album sales. It took iTunes coming along selling songs ala-carte to prove you actually make MORE money by letting people buy what they want.

We cannot obtain licenses for Custom CDG (or MP3G) which is why we discontinued doing it a few years ago. The company (out of Australia) that took this over and could legally make and ship them is trying to renegotiate rights to be able to offer Custom CDGs again. But because of the ease with which the songs could be pirated, sales had fallen off to the point it was not cost effective to continue making them. With our activity "driving" interest in getting legal CDGs to fill in missing "holes" they are trying to get it going again.

As for iTunes, I have stated here multiple times that currently publishers' licenses for Karaoke downloads state "for private, home commercial use only", thus using them for Karaoke Shows (a commercial use) is not allowed. We hope that if we can generate enough sales for which royalties are paid we can negotiate digital COMMERCIAL rights and then you could have "a la carte" selections.

 

[Sound Choice]

I would really love to see them come up with collections to compliment the foundations and bricks. I don't need any more duplicates. I just need more updated content. That's why I'm sticking to CB and/or Sunfly now.

Yes, we know that we are not "keeping" up with the latest releases. When the level of buying increases to the point that we can recover our costs (which can also be reduced by the publishers asking for more reasonable advances) we will begin producing new music again. But we are also facing a dilemna in that we are hoping to be able to negotiate rights to do downlaods that are commercially legal - and if that happens we don't want to have a lot of money tied up in physical discs for which we paid royalty advances on that we would never recoup.

 

[Sound Choice]

I believe that as these sets sell SC will produce new music in the sets as well!

Yes, of course we hope to do new music. And to do them in MP3G sets - but the dilemma is that most publishers charge a fixing fee and advances per disc, so that if we do a CDG and an MP3G disc, there might be barely enough sales to support the production of one disc - let alone two with the same songs/different formats. We would need to get them to drop the requirement for fees on a per discs basis and be more flexible in how they do their licensing fees.

I know that many of you think or blame the manufacturers for not "keeping up" with technology, but believe me, to do this legally, WE are not the primary impediment to progress.

 

[Sound Choice]

Wait. So they won't even SELL you the GEM series unless you submit to an audit first? Is that what I am reading?!

NO - especially because we hope that most pirates will see this as the most effective and efficient way to become legal. WE KNOW that the majority of KJs out there have either all or a great majority of the songs on their drives illegally. So there would be no point in doing an audit to prove they were illegal. The audits are an opportunity for a defendant to prove their innocence if they are in a lawsuit and believe they are legal.

If you buy our discs (before being named in a lawsuit) and maintain a 1:1 ratio under our license you would not have anything to worry about.

However, someone who is licensing the GEM Series would be required to delete any songs for which they don't have an original CDG as part of their licensing requirement. Then the "audit clause" is there as an incentive to keep them "honest". That would mean that some of their illegally obtained songs would need to be deleted or they might have to buy add-on CDGs if they are not in the GEM Series to keep more of their library legal. We also hope that the Custom CDG site that used to sell our songs can be started again so that specific songs that are out of print and that are not cost effective for us to produce again can be legally replaced.

While this might limit your available Sound Choice library to about 7000 songs, even we know that a great number of songs just are not that popular any more (and should probably never have been recorded in the first place).

For those who can track the song titles that are played (many of the software programs can) I would be willing to bet that over 80% of your library (if you have over 15,000 songs) have never been played. So, a huge library is just not necessary to have an effective show.

Do you think that BaskinRobbins would sell any more ice cream if they had more than 31 flavors? I bet they would actually sell less, because people would take too long deciding their flavor and slow down the service.

For those with a heavy "regular" crowd - don't most sing the same 4-5 songs over and over and over again? Even when you have "everything"?

We really are trying our best to come up with legal solutions that will benefit everyone (excpet those thieves who are chosing to dig in their heels and remain pirates). Then we would sue their venues as a last recourse.

 

[Sound Choice]

Gem series link

Better late than never I guess!

http://www.soundchoicestore.com/gemseriessale.html

Try this now:

http://www.soundchoicestore.com/

 

[Sound Choice]

I expected SC to use this set to try to tap into that 90% of KJs that they claim are pirates.

I just dont see PIRATES buying a $4500 set(pre order price) with strings attached.

A pirate can License 6000 songs for $4480 (with "strings attached" or if they want to continue to gamble they can pay $6800 or more for 4800 songs as part of their legal settlement if they get caught in a lawsuit - with a lot more strings attached. As we make it easier to be legal we will be making it more expensive to be a pirate.

The lawsuits are a last resort - not our first choice.

And if they chose to go out of business, then we hope that the GEM Series will be appealing to a legal KJ who might be fully booked and wants to add another system to fill the vacuum. We hope to provide financing (to credit worthy individuals) with pricing and payments that will allow the host to cash flow his new system (keeping payments under $300 or so a month - which would allow him to pocket $300 if he adds one show a week at $150 a night).

 

[Sound Choice]

So just so I have this straight by paying your money to a company to purchase something that is old compilations you have to agree to a let them possibly audit you or you can't purchase?

No, you have to agree to possible future audits if you license the GEM SERIES as an extra "incentive" to stay legal. We know that many formerly legal hosts have gone over to the "dark side" as they felt forced to compete with pirates who had no money invested. And at the time we did not have things in place to be able to help them out. And we did not have the cooperation of other manufacturers who saw each other as the primary competition. Now the manufacturers see piracy as the biggest impediment to the future of Karaoke and are working in concert to try to correct that.

So, in the future we hope the response from legal hosts (that includes those who have a license from either buying it or from a negotiated lawsuit settlement) is to work with the manufacturers, venues and other legal hosts to get rid of the pirates not join them. The right to audit is a (hopefully unnecessary) tool to help them "resist" the dark side.

We also have a number of fully legal hosts who are wanting us to conduct a voluntary audit so that they can get or keep more gigs and have a license or "certification" or maybe even a KIAA membership to help "prove" that they are legal. As more venues are educated to their legal liabilities you can expect that more will be wanting to know that their hosts are legal FOR ALL SONGS on their sytems.