Karaoke Forums

Just clarifying after Bazza fogged what I posted. I never claimed that discs will be the future media. I SAID HARD Media would. Whether disc, card, flash drive, or something else.
Downloads are already being pulled. When streamed data is trapped and recorded (it can be and is, but not on a large scale yet) it will be stopped as well.

Believe it or don't believe it. Whatever makes you happy. I CAN say that distributing IP controlled product without copyright protection is a constant money loser for the companies involved, and they are not in business to lose money. I have stayed ahead of the competition by correctly predicting trends in this and other businesses. When they disagree, I win.

All good.

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

Joe. You are wrong.

If you think hard media is the future of karaoke, kindly predict who will be producing it.

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-Chris

Tell it to Apple. All songs downloaded on iTunes are DRM-Free. Think they are constantly losing money?

Yeah, I am not picking up what Joe is putting down. They make it easier to buy than to steal and people buy. There is nothing easy with hard media.

Companies have wasted so much money and effort in DRM type deals, SC included. They finally got smart and realized some will steal regardless of how much you spend to try to keep them from stealing. Make it easy for buyers to buy and they will buy.

They are failing to capture revenues from file-shared iTunes-originated tracks, and that's probably not insignificant. That is not the same thing as losing money, however, and from an economic perspective, as long as their operation is profitable to Apple and the record labels who own the tracks, it's likely to continue, regardless of whether there is sharing.

The truth is that change is coming in karaoke, and sooner than you expect. The future isn't media-focused at all.

Exactly what I have been saying. The kind of media has no bearing on piracy. Unless there IS no media.

IaaS = Infrastructure as a Service
SaaS = Software as a Service
PaaS = Platform as a Service
DaaS = Desktop as a Service
IT = IT as a Service

Anyone seeing the trend here?

KaaS = ******* as a Service

Turn on you PC (or even a dedicated device)
Establish a network connection
Connect to a Karaoke music source on the Internet
(don't get tripped up on the word "cloud" though because "cloud" is a marketing term for "what you want exists elsewhere and you just need a network connection to get to it")
Run your show

You will either pay per play, buy tracks to won, or have a subscription. perhaps a combination of all of those even.

But we will not be seeing NEW karaoke companies popping up creating discs.
We will not see existing karaoke companies ramping up physical media production.

It won't be long before one of the iRC folks integrates a karaoke player into their mIRC script. Then someone will create an add-on for rotation management. THAT is all that is needed to provide unlimited access to all karaoke that has ever been and ever will be.......FOR FREE....THAT is my greatest fear for karaoke. That is what keep me up at night.

As I mentioned earlier, we need some partnerships between the existing karaoke software companies and the karaoke music providers. Integrate existing online stores with the karaoke software to make it cheapo and easy for KJ's to locate and buy karaoke tracks. Of course we also nee the publishers to loosen their death grip on their IP as well.

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-Chris

Yup. "Popcorn Time" for Karaoke.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_Time

I think that, like it or not, this is the beginning of the end. Between publishers pulling karaoke tracks, the No Fly List, piracy, and everybody suing everybody... it's just a matter of time.

There are still no laws governing the karaoke industry and there's not gonna be. Sad but true. I don't see it turning around and getting any better. I think it's only going to get worse.

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Electro-Voice Evolve 50... Taking Sound To The Next Level.

you've been saying that for years, care to elaborate any more.....
didn't think so.

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens

From one Luddite to another.... Kindly define for me what it means for the media to be on a Card or Flash Drive. Wouldn't that require the file/s to have been downloaded from somewhere (which sort of contradicts what you just said about downloads being pulled)?

Oh! Remember Motown actually did that for several volumes, and the discs were around $20 or $25, which was hardly a deal-breaker. I collected most but not quite all. Not much beats the original music coming up for the singer. They did have some issues with absent background vocals, but those classics weren't recorded with karaoke in mind.

In a perfect world every label would release every new album in cdg format (same disc, second layer?) or every track in both mp3 and mp3+g format at the same time. Kinda like the movie studios shooting a movie AND it's sequel at the same time, because they already know there's going to be a sequel and it's much cheaper to film both at once. Over time, that would solve a lot of problems.

Not sure if it was actually Motown that did it themselves, the discs were actually produced by Pocket Songs so they may have actually purchased the license for the rights to use the original recording.

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

I'm not at liberty to elaborate at present, except to say that an announcement is expected in a matter of days.

I hope it's something good. This industry could use some good news for a change

Anything that makes it easier for anyone to become a KJ with very little investment or training is bad news for our industry. I can just imagine a time in the near future that you won't even need a PA system..... the KJ will instruct everyone to turn on their Smartphone and the music will be wirelessly transmitted to every phone in the room creating a huge surround sound system. It will sound like crap but to many that doesn't seem to matter.

I'm just kidding of course

There needs to be a sufficient barrier to entry that prevents a glut in the market. Easy, computer based piracy eliminated one of the barriers by reducing the cost of obtaining music to zero. That was the one thing that kept all but the most passionate people out of the market. Now, literally anyone with a PC and few hundred bucks for a PA can be a KJ. It is an extremely low cost, high margin business to start for the pirate types. Even working for peanuts that are still able to make good money.

The lawsuits may have pushed a few people out and may have even prevented new entries into the market, but even that isn't working any longer.

I do worry about the long term viability of karaoke as an industry, but I am quite comfortable with the longevity of my particular business. I am diversifying so that karaoke alone doesn't determine that fate of my company.

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-Chris

Perhaps you can answer this question: An announcement is coming...but from WHOM???

Because he states that he is not at liberty to say my guess would be that the "WHOM" is his client.

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Music speaks to the heart in ways words cannot express.

Chris, as I stated several times throughout this thread, my guess would be direct publisher / owner production, or said entities choosing a third party to produce as a subcontractor - still under direct control of said entities. They could even choose a past or current karaoke producer or two.

As for my being wrong: Not so far....

If I DO turn out to be wrong about hard media, the producers will be wrong too - and will find that out eventually.

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

" Disc based and loving it..."