Karaoke Forums

I'm new here so if this has been discussed further back, my apologies.

I've noticed what seems to be an ever-increasing rental market in karaoke, not just locally but nationally with services like http://www.nationwidekaraokerentals.com/index.html

As a long-time KJ I bristle at not only having to compete with undercutting pirates, but now it seems we have to compete with low-cost rentals.

Now rentals have always been there, in the form of renting a cdg player accompanied by a binder full of discs, and anyone who wants to risk their originals in this way is certainly entitled to do so.

But now we have rental machines that instead of coming with discs come with pre-loaded hard drives or memory cards. And the sets off a red light, or so I would think.

The odds that a rental service with say, 10 rigs to rent out, perhaps all in the same day, has 10 copies of each original disc behind those tracks seem, well, slender at best. Not impossible, but slender.

That is one issue.

The second issue is that if you rent out mp3+g's or other format tracks on any device, what prevents the rental customer from copying that whole library in one fell swoop? And surely people would be tempted. So even if the rental was backed up by one to one discs back in the shop, isn't this creating a high-risk opportunity for new piracy?

Now to my thinking an illegal rental service should be an easy target for manufacturers to go after, a stationary target as their businesses have addresses and phone numbers.

But has anyone heard of a case where a manufacturer went and found its product illegally shifted to a rental machine, and if so was anything pursued?

I am curious as I haven't seen this topic come up elsewhere.

You could certainly rent out a preloaded system provided that you own the original discs for each system (to be really legal).
No there's not much you can do to stop anyone from copying the drive on their own! Or even discs for that matter - except for the time to do so which would take considerably longer (days as opposed to hours with mp3g).

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You would not be able to copy the drive if the system was set up with encryption. OK, someone could if they had the right tools and enough time, but some of the newer encryption solutions are darned near impossible to crack.

I offer a rental system and includes a kj so no worries about losing my music to the less than honest customer. When ever I get a call and they want a quote (say for little sally's 14th birthday party or Uncle Bob's retirement party) I quote X$$ and tell them that includes setup and a kj to run the equipment and host. Then they will say "no, we just want to rent the music and equipment but we will do everything ourselves, how much is that?" I respond with the "Oh, OK the price is X$$ (the same price as the first quote with the KJ)" They usually ask why with the KJ and I explain that if they were to just go to a sound equipment rental house the cost of the equipment is probably going to cost them more for the 1 event including delivery and setup and require a hefty deposit up front and sorry the rental house will not have technical support at 10pm on Saturday night to solve sound issues or software issues (I would really love to say "to fix anything the customer has screwed up"). Their usual response it that they thought they could rent the music and equipment for about $100. Yea right! However, I have converted some of those call into sales of my KJ services along the way after a short conversation with the perspective client.

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No venue to big or too small. From your den to the local club or event, we have the music most requested. Great sounding system!

Love it!!!

Can I steal that the next time someone comes to me for a rental? So much more fun than just saying "no"