Karaoke Forums

Wanted to see if one of your resourceful people can dig up some information for us. We mentioned to a customer that if the budget is lower, maybe go with the subscription packages for now. Then the potential buyer says that a seller offered them over 60,000 songs. I think about 28,000 karaoke and 37,000 dj.
for under $3k.

The seller told this buyer that there are brands such as SGB, TopHitsMonthly, Dangerous, Chartbuster, and many more brands included. The seller says that they pay a monthly fee to the music providers to
be able to sell the complete libraries to the customer.

Here is our first thoughts:

1). How can anyone sell a library like that for the consumer to own it outright when retailer states they are paying monthly fees. That sounds like the closest thing to subscription. So what happens when the retailer stops paying this monthly fee.

2). Furthermore, how can those brands be included when many of them were gone before the digital
revolution (therefore needing original disc for a 1 to 1 basis on certain brands to begin with?)

You guys are pretty smart in here and keep your noses to the ground. Can anyone dig up some information to see if this is even possible. Maybe there is a blanket license they are getting, etc.
Don't know. Yet we could never provide that to customers. I would like to hear the opinions from the veterans in here as it is impossible to compete with that. We told the customer to dig deeper and if they find out it is legit, then why would they ever buy from us when the other deal is clearly the winner. Yet everything in my gut tells me it really smells like dead fish.

_________________
MADPROAUDIO ~ DISABLED VETERAN ~ FAMILY OWNED COMPANY

First clue,

subscription for CB product. Not!

Second clue,

The fish smell!

Just another hard drive seller!!!

_________________
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!

Craigslist don't own anything special. There is no way any of it legal!

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

Bottom line... It is not legal! You need to turn this guy in.

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

Turn him into who and based on what? Your opinion?

No one retails DJ or karaoke music for $0.05 a song. If an individual were able to pay wholesale costs and still have a profit margin at $0.05 retail, then the big guys like Amazon/iTunes that are doing these things on incredible scale would be selling songs for $0.03-0.04 each, and the manufacturer cost would be closer to $0.01-0.02.

Use some common sense! This dude is a pirate.

The real shame is you are wasting your time by turning the guy in. No one cares.

_________________
C Mc
KJ, FL

My point exactly.

Prompting this topic helps others see what is talked about and maybe they too will ask tough questions of that seller who is peddling the loaded drive with all that music. I have asked manufacturers to dig into this one because they apparantly have 11 times more the music we can provide at around the same cost.
Currently, if we were to put together that many songs for a consumer, I suspect it would cost us over $10,000 just to obtain such a thing. Unless of course we found an old store dumping thousands of disc
for nothing. Then we would have that opportunity to accomplish something. But even then, could never
do it for the money this customer says they were offering all that at.

Thanks for the input guys!

_________________
MADPROAUDIO ~ DISABLED VETERAN ~ FAMILY OWNED COMPANY

I have stopped reporting hard drive sellers. No results. Not worth my time. And there are more selling in my area than ever now. At least 6 hard drive sellers refresh their ads in WA and OR Craigslist ads every week.

_________________
-Chris

* Comment was: Use some common sense* I agree as that's what we wish for the customer to do.
We have no illussions on what we suspect this is. So hopefully no one thinks we are the ones not
using the common sense.

* Comment was: The real shame is you are wasting your time. * We agree because it truly is sad
that nothing is truly done about it. This is why we encourage conversations, opinions, people digging
deeper. The more people that talk about it, the more new consumers can research and make
informed decisions.

Thanks again guys for your input.

_________________
MADPROAUDIO ~ DISABLED VETERAN ~ FAMILY OWNED COMPANY

I hear ya. The seller that this consumer is talking about is an actual retail store, not a craigslist seller.
Which should not be different. But I assume a buyer would turn to a retail store thinking that it is automatically legit unlike craigslist. Hope that made sense.

_________________
MADPROAUDIO ~ DISABLED VETERAN ~ FAMILY OWNED COMPANY

MIGHT be able to turn over an actual retail store to the FBI for selling pirated music. Whether they will pursue it further or not is another question.

http://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field

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

Seems one of the problems is the FBI is stationed in only 37 of the 50 States. One would think they would have at least one office in each State.

_________________
You can be strange but not a stranger

I believe the FBI has enough to keep up with besides karaoke pirates.

It has been said before, and it bears repeating, SC does NOT care about the HDD sellers. Why?? They WANT more people buying these drives for the simple reason of getting more lawsuits. Lawsuits drive sales. SC wants to sell GEMS. They can sell more of them if there are more loaded hard drive users. The FBI certainly has bigger issues to worry about than people selling Hard Drives full of music. This is problem that will never go away.

_________________
I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

This just in hot off the press. Digitrax told me that they wanted to make it crystal clear that NO retailer that is claiming they pay a monthly fee to be able to sell their product on a computer is flat out WRONG!
So if the seller that is doing this, reads it. If digitrax (owner of the chartbuster brand) was working with any retailer, I think they would know best who they work with. They are clearly saying NO WAY! So I guess that retailer will have to not mention chartbuster now. Yet the trail of offerings are already there.

To those that sell loaded drives that do not make mathematical sense and you indeed have this so called
deal with music providers. Someone please help them show others it is legit and move on. If not, then
it will always leave people scratching their heads as to how such an offer can exist. The one seller on ebay that offers the 60,000 songs won't even reply to you through ebay about what he is giving you. Further research shows it is some karaoke host selling a system with 60,000 songs loaded on a drive and no proof exist that it was purchased from any manufacturer! Hmmm, go figure!

_________________
MADPROAUDIO ~ DISABLED VETERAN ~ FAMILY OWNED COMPANY

Bobby - Sound Choice sues for Trademark infringement. A hard drive seller will be difficult to prosecute for trademark infringement unless they are slapping SC logos on the hard drives or the packaging. This is much different than a KJ displaying the logo during a show.

Hard drive sellers are not easy to nail down. If they were, then we would have seen activity around it in the music and video world as well.

SC's lack of prosecution likely has nothing to do with what you suggest and more to due with it just being a LOT harder to prosecute.

_________________
-Chris

I'm sure they have a division setup for music/movie pirates.

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

They certainly do through their White Collar crime division.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate ... ar/ipr/ipr

_________________
You can be strange but not a stranger

by a hard drive from them, find all the SC content on it with trademarks, have more solid evidence than any investigation of a "technical infringer" kj, sure the crap out of them for making and distributing counterfeit material....THESE are the guys actually costing SC money.
it's much easier than going after the kj's as they do all the investigation for you.

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