Karaoke Forums

So, as Troy can verify, we have a LOT of bad competition in our area, but I never noticed many pirates, just bad disc based companies. It seems like there are always new guys popping up everywhere, and recently the pirates have been popping up.

I went to two shows last night, both bad and both pirates. How do I know? The first guy flat out ANNOUNCED "if you can't find a song in my book, we just downloaded 30,000 songs!" I almost fell out of my chair. I have spent five years building my library, and he surpassed my catalog "just now"?

The other show is not as obvious, other than he runs on the house PA, uses a laptop and an extra computer monitor sitting on a table for the singer, and has vocally masked karaoke tracks. I also know that he is getting paid only $50. Pirate? probably, but not confirmed by his own admission.

There is another company in town that has a few gigs, one of them being today and another tomorrow, that has a similar set-up to the previous mentioned one, but streams off of YouTube!

And yet another discount KJ company that talks about "being in a group that simply pays a small monthly fee to download all the karaoke tracks ever produced, so they can get you anything you want". There is no such legal venue for this. Pirate. Oh yeah, they didn't even have books until recently and the KJs are pricks to everybody, including customers.

Another company in town is still disc based, but has all of their discs sitting out in the open - ALL COPIED! I didn't see a single original disc. Granted, yes, the argument could be made that they have the originals at home and they use their backup discs, but it looks bad. Keep the copies at home and bring the originals if this is the case.

The largest karaoke company in Michigan just got nailed back in 2006 I think for copied discs. That was pretty obvious too, considering they had 13 systems and covered all of southern Michigan. They still have shows, but not as many, and have been replaced by all of these yahoos. If it wasn't for the copied discs, at least these guys had a good company.

It was bad enough when we had the crappy disc based guys (most of who are still around). But this is making it so much worse. It is so hard to get gigs in this area from how bad of a name karaoke has from these shows. There are guys coming into this for next to nothing taking shows. I don't even know how many thousands I have put into this so far. At least $15,000. These guys I doubt have more than $1500 put in.

The sad thing is the singers don't seem to care either way. They continue to go to these shows. And bars keep booking them because they will do shows for less than $150. I only have one show I was doing for less than that, and that was explained in another thread. However, I am dropping that show the first of the year if they wont go to $150, and I doubt they will. I have helped them out for long enough.

Then there are the other hosts who talk crap about other shows to try to get them booted, been dealing with that too, but that is a whole other topic....

What are your thoughts on "purchasable" karaoke downloads sites such as:
www.tricerasoft.com
www.buykaraokedownloads.com
www.singsunfly.com
store.thekaraokechannel.com
..and others??

These are legit sites...I pay anywhere on average $.99 to $2.99 a song...

What drives me crazy are the older folks that bring thier "copied" cd's and ask me to play them...when I've already either had or purchased the CD or Purchased/downloaded the actual song "legally"...to ensure thier return...

...and they still bring the CD's...

I have no problem with those sites. It is argued that they may or may not be legal, AKA buykaraokedownloads are not licensed tracks, etc. IMO, if you pay for each individual track, it should be legit, and I use many of those sites, plus purchase discs. It is those that argue torrents are ok or streaming is ok. NO IT IS NOT.

Hell, now you can get into the business legally for dirt cheap with the Chartbuster preloaded drive, but you still see all of these cheapskates out there.

buykaraokedownloads i've heard are not a licensed site at all. I know they weren't a few years back when they were offering SC & CB tracks - didn't know they were still around honestly.
Karaoke Channel are supposedly not for commercial use (ie bars/etc.).
Tricerasoft and Sunfly are supposedly only licensed for worldwide MINUS USA & Canda so not legal for kj's to use in the states.
selectatrack.com is another great site for downlaods - all manu authorized (again UK though).

Part of the business - many bring their own discs because of specific version/manu - many kj's believe it doesn't matter which version as long as you have the song (I am not one for that belief) so think their version is going to be acceptable to everyone, or recorded in a proper key/tempo that often many kj's can't/won't/forget adjust. You either make a rule that you do not play customer discs, or go with it & make the person more willing to return to your show. You can easily state you won't play 'burnt' discs for legality purposes and they must provide an original or sing the version you have.

_________________
LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

altho tricerasoft has not confirmed it yet, they claim that their license states 'for kj use'

My personal take on it is 'I paid for it, I'm going to use it. if someone wants to come after me for that, let them try and prove damaages'

-james

^^^ Agreed. This whole "not licensed for USA" crap need to end. The record companies need to get over themselves. Before long, all karaoke companies will relocate to the UK or elsewhere.