Karaoke Forums

Which proves what I have said all along Joe that the Cloud is more of a threat to the survival of quality karaoke than pirates ever were. It has the potential to be pirates on steroids. Who is at most risk from the suits of SC and PR, the venues the deep pockets in most cases. What better way to protect themselves than by controlling the karaoke themselves and using a service at least that currently removes the threat of a suit by PR, and in the future probably SC, when they decide to join the Cloud Service. You are right to think the solution as far as the individual professional host is worse than the current problem. The pirates are like lone hoods unorganized, what Cloud does is organize a patch work problem. The trouble is professional hosts have never organized due mainly their mistrust of one another. We are divided and therefore easy to replace. I have always felt that the craft of the host is something that has to be developed over many years, and is a very complex process. The A list host must have several skills and have a good knowledge of both music and their a equipment, along with a good sense of running a service type business. What the Cloud Service does is dumb down the abilities learned over years, and enables some one off the street to operate at least the mechanics of the host job. Making it possible to run a show and pay a person minimum wage to do so. I have to laugh that so many certified hosts thought my license to allow a host to run his business would make pirates legal, and degrade the value of a host. At least under my plan the pirates would still be responsible for setting up their own business, and developing their skills. Here everything is done for them and handed to them by the manus the certified hosts have supported over the last several years. Talk about an ironic situation. Have a nice day.

P.S. Don't think that a massed produced karaoke service necessarily has to be garbage Joe. The Multi-Rigger locally has a very good business plan. He went to the locale colleges and Jr. colleges and recruited his operators from the music and entertainment dept students. Many of these workers have a good knowledge of music, and can really sing quite well. Also being younger they learn very quickly how to use the computer since unlike us they were born with it. He pays them 12.50 to 15.00 dollars an hour to do something easy for them, it is a lot better than flipping burgers to work your way through college. When I went to college many years ago I had a music teacher, who worked her way through playing piano at night in a dinner house. She worked for only tips and managed to pay for her education, no salary. Something to think about.

Basically except for cosmetics the machine is the same machine. When JVC stopped making the 3 Tray, RSQ must have obtained permission to copy the machine, I'm sure for some kind of financial consideration. The main problem with both machines is that there are so many different types of disc formats now, many of the newer ones can't be read by the old 3 Tray. I use the RSQ-NEO-22 as a back up player. It loads slow but can read just about any disc format, also it has a very good quality flash drive as well in it. I play my music videos through the flash drive since I'm not computer based. I hope this answers some question smooth edge. RSQ has developed a new dual tray player that may load faster, I have been looking at. Have a nice day.

1) If you mean that a good host's current gigs may suffer or be lost, I doubt it. A current gig with a top host would be bringing in too much money to risk.

If, however, you mean that future markets (venues) could be ruined by the service, you are correct. Not because the service would replace hosts in the LONG term, but because of damage caused by short term ( and it would be short) use by the untrained via the venue owner, who will then consider karaoke to be a negative addition to their venues.

2) I never thought they were. We had a successful multi-rigger/karaoke store owner here for a long time before he finally retired. The difference is that a good multi trains his/her hosts to be as good as the owner.

The venue's Cloud KJ may get some minimal training on how to play the tracks, and that's about it. Not only that, but at minimum house pay, what would be the motivation to to improve their skills on their own time?

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"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

JVC made the machines for RSQ, when JVC stopped production of the famed single & trip tray, they stopped it for RSQ as well.

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Thanks for clearing that up Lonman, I knew it was basically the same machine, I just didn't know the arrangement between JVC and RSQ. Which is interesting since JVC is a Japanese company and RSQ is Chinese right?

This is where I disagree with you Joe, you expect the venue owner to act in a rational manner and not monkey with a show that is successful, and had a long run. I had a fellow host who had just such a long term successful show that was making money. The venue owner did not change, but he changed his mind about the type of crowd he wanted. My friend Dennis was at this particular bar and grill for over 15 years. He had the latest state of the art equipment, and tons of experience and music. His only draw back was he was over 60 years old. His crowd was older but they spent tons of money. The venue owner thought if he could get rid of Dennis and his high though earned salary, he could bring in a younger host for less, and attract a younger crowd. He went ahead with his plan, ran off the older crowd to get the young people in, guess what young people have little money in this economy. Also they don't all just drink they go out in the parking lot and let's say use other substances. Also he had to beef up his security because a younger crowd also tends to be rather more combative than the baby boomers. By the time he figured this all out the owner tried to get Dennis back, guess what he was playing at the locale Indian Casino by that time at double the pay of the old gig and had health and dental insurance as well. So everything ended well except for the venue owner, who tried to save a few bucks.

Also I feel that it is possible to setup a decent level mass produced karaoke service, if a person had the drive, knowledge and desire to do so. The one factor that would discourage a venue from setting up their own in house karaoke system would be a lack of knowledge. If a former retired host wanted to setup a consulting business helping venues establish the own in house service they could. It would not take that much, the consultant could charge the venue 35.00 to 50.00 a month. It doesn't sound like much but if you could sign up say 100 venues that would be 3500.00 to 5000.00 a month. As the consultant you would buy and install the karaoke equipment for the venue using their money, recruit the operators and train them, obtain the Cloud service for the venues. You could use the banquet room of one of the venues to train the operators. These operators have little interest in becoming karaoke hosts, being college students they would go on the their chosen professions and you would have to train the new ones. At least if your training methods are uniform, you would get a certain amount of uniformity as far as the quality of the host. Just an rough idea of course, it still needs some tweaking. The consultant wouldn't be to popular with his fellow hosts however. Have a nice day.

I don't know which All Hits version YOU have, but my 8001 is the complete song, just without the girl's ending lyric. When I sing it, I let the girl do the Meat Loaf part, and I sing the girl's part, cause I know that song by heart. When I do the baseball play by play, I set my controls to sound like an AM Radio, and everything. I LOVE that version. Out of all the versions I have sung, it's the only one I like. The timing is perfect, the sound is good, and it's just about spot on to the original.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

I can only speak from my experience, of course. But in that experience spanning decades back to cassette tapes and lyric sheets, I have never lost a show to an undercutter, whether legal or pirate.

If I bring in $2,000.00 to $2500, they don't seem to want to risk that to save a hundred or a hundred and a half.

I'm not saying that there aren't owners stupid enough- hence my worries about the cloud souring new markets- but most seem to like a guaranteed income, rather than risking it for what ends up being a tiny savings vs a guarantee.

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"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."