Karaoke Forums

If you have paid any attention to the price of karaoke music, Sound Choice discs on eBay are about as high as I have seen them in the past 4 years. Most people are listing them with starting bids around $15 with the occasional $10 start. This includes Star Series with only 8 tracks per disc. There is no other brand that runs this high except DK.

There is also a noticeable lack of bulk buys on eBay and Craigslist (at least CL in WA, OR, ID).

You can expect to pay a pretty penny to pick up SC discs for the foreseeable future.

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-Chris

In this case I think we are looking more at fill-in/safety value as opposed to product value. Chartbuster and Pocket, both rated higher in their respective genres ( by this I mean country and show tunes) than SC, are not climbing so high, nor are other higher end brands. I did note that Priddis doen't go cheap at all.

On the other hand, I think we will be seeing a general rise in prices in the near future as other sources dry up.

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

I don't think it matters as far as fill in or whatever, obviously the product can command the price either way! And since it's the only manu product that the manu is filing suit, it will keep the prices high and probably keep climbing through the next months to possibly years. The other brands mentioned aren't commanding as high of prices on regular basis - as a matter of fact I saw 'new' CB discs going for under $10 quite often, can't say that about SC on a regular basis anymore.

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

I somewhat agree with Joe. I think discs from all manufacturers will generally rise over time. Especially the publishers truly take notice of the karaoke industry. The exception to this might be Chartbuster given the massive quantity of discs that were dumped on the market just prior to their demise. But even their product might become more scarce over time.

The point of this thread was to point out that Sound Choice stands above the rest in value. You can extrapolate your own reasons for this, but I believe it have to do with a combination of factors:

Quality of product
Continued reduction in supply
Continued high demand
Ongoing litigation

Of interest to me is if or when we will start seeing SC, CB, and PHM getting reproduced illegally on disc the way some of the garbage brands have been for a few years now. At that point, the content will become available at bargain basement prices.

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-Chris

How soon before these show up? http://www.discmakers.com/duplicators/

I had a similar machine for my media business a few years back. I could put a stack of 100 blanks discs on the spool, copy the master content to the hard drive and come back in about 45 minutes to start labeling the finished discs. It cost me about $6000 for the machine back then but I couldn't have run that business without it. If someone were serious about duplicating for piracy, they could get into the business relatively cheaply and probably come real close to matching the labeling as well. Sometimes you have to be aware of unintended consequences.

THose have been around since CDR existed. This is how the original pirates started, I knew kj's that had a dual disc duplicator in their rig & customer discs would be copied in about 10-15 minutes while they waited to sing while the singer had no clue it was happening. Then lo & behold the kj would have that same disc listed by the next show. And that was either just writing on the disc or printing a cheesy paper label. With todays thermal disc printer, they could easily buy the silver looking blanks & print direct to the disc that look nearly authentic without the cheesy paper that won't be damaged when it gets wet either.

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

Do a search for "karaoke" on eBay and there will be plenty of 15 bay disc dupers that show up.

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-Chris

You just confirmed what I said. There is no evidence that the higher prices are due to quality, but as shown - and stated by you - SC's sales are suit driven. The others are not climbing as fast because they aren' t suing.
YOU stated this above. Nothing to do with beiing a good product- though even I agree that they are.
Again, brands like CB are considered SUPERIOR to SC in their genres, yet without suits, their prices haven't jumped.

It's not quality, but fear driven. People who will pay those prices aren't interested in the quality.

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

I believe it is multiple factors. But I strongly believe that if SC were the same quality as BackStage, they would not command the same price even with the suits.

Quality *is* a factor.

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-Chris

Those machines were originally made for recording studio purposes or other use. It is known that karaoke manu's now sell their work via CDR, as it is cheaper than having a glass master and pressing done. This bugs me.

How are we to know if the discs out now are genuine or not? Even a local store I wholesale with told me that people are turning around and walking out on them for the manu's sending them the format on a CDR with a plain black and white label and bar code.

The reason they made those machines were for recording studios who offered printing services to artists sending out promo packs to producers and A&R reps.

I own a recording studio and we send our clients to DiscMakers to press their albums. There is a lot involved in this process. The one thing people forget is that when you cut a CD and it is original songs, you can sell those as long as you are the writer of all the tracks. If co-writers are involved, that is another ball game.

If you are doing a "cover" or "remake" of a song it requires a ton of paperwork. Harry Fox, the publishers, and many other requirements. It does not matter if you had a studio remake the track for you. You still have to pay the publishing companies a percentage of a song royalty with a down payment and a percentage of each track sold.

I've had people get mad when we offer to send their product out to DiscMakers or give them their final mix on 1 CD. We also had to explain to them that if there were 5, 10, 100 or 300 discs printed that any cover songs or originals that were co-written must pay royalties to all the co-writers, publishers, etc. "per sale" and per play (Jukebox / live performance / radio) which is not that expensive.

There have been times where co-writers get greedy and it can end up being a battle.

It gets really tough when you have 4 co-writers: One with ASCAP, 2 with BMI, another with SESAC. (PAPERWORK CENTRAL!)

There is also the blanket license renewal and a whole heap of other stuff involved. Owning our own publishing company as an ASCAP affiliate and playing by the rules is important to us. We respect the recording industry.

One thing we refuse to do is allow someone to bring a karaoke track in from any company and record it in our studio. Even though some karaoke companies allow licensing of their songs for studio use, we probably will not be offering this service at the moment.

I do understand the details karaoke companies must go through just to get rights to make the backing track alone. There is then the "Synch License" which allows your track to have any type of video / graphics or lyrics added... That is a whole other mess which I am thankful NOT to be involved in.

It is sad how the industry has changed. I can say that when karaoke was on 8-tracks and cassette tapes that you would get songs where the printed lyrics would have the dreaded note under the song title:

Unfortunately we are unable to print the lyrics to this song at the publishers request. We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. Please flip the tape over and listen to the guide vocals to learn this song. (on 8-tracks you did not have that option)

First, I wish to clarify. Quality is DEFINITELY a factor, and SC is certainly a quality brand. I never said otberwise. What I meant was that the earlier acceleration of pricing over others of high quality ( that I believe will follow suit) is largely due to safety concerns.

As far as duplicators are concerned, most of my back up discs were made on a Microboards Quik-Disc 80 stand- alone unit.

Why? More choice of dupe speeds at the time it was bought, error correction, and several other reasons including longer lasting copies than those made on PCs in those days (Goldenhawk drive, anyone?)

Admittedly, Power Karaoke has really made PCs pretty much the equal, except for the physical burn (stronger burn) . EASE of use and error correction also still goes to the stand - alone.

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

Joe,

You mentioned something that caught my attention and you are very correct on this issue. The speed of burning a disc.

The slower the speed, the deeper the burn. I have seen some karaoke companies make custom discs. The companies often burn at quick speeds which is like using chalk on a chalkboard verses paint that won't come off. (A lot of times during play, you get the confetti graphics and have to send it back and get a new one.)

4x is best and you can still get those discs even if your burners say they burn at 16 to 48x. If the disc is only compatible with 4x writing then the burner will only do 4x as the disc will not allow it to move faster then 4x. Anything over 8x you will get issues. NEVER go above 16x...

When we give a master to someone who cuts an album, we do it at 4x. If I could I would do it at 1x, .

SC's GEM series is a burned white-label product (I mean that literally, not "white label" in the sense of a product made for someone else to put its own branding on). Switching to that saved significant production costs, but it did raise the question of whether the market would accept it as a genuine product. SC solved that by placing a holographic sticker on genuine product. It's not impossible to reproduce, of course, but it is difficult enough that a pirate won't bother.

As luck would have it, I do have a DVD/CD burner that operates @ 1x..

And yes, speed does make the difference..

Suits may be aiding in driving used sales now, but I believe the quality is also helping that. DK original discs still command a higher price than their SCDG counterparts. I've seen the original 99 go for $1500-2000 for the set.
CB I've never felt were superior to SC - in country, they were a contender, not much else.

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

If one were to burn in "safe" mode on the Quic-disc, one WOULD be burning at 1x1. They are capable of that, and the error correction firmware is still superior as well. I do plan on buying another, even though I like Power Karaoke's software and sometimes use it as well. Also, since it is a purpose developed device, it is much more durable for that use..

Also, ( and for this I will have to double-check the spec sheet) I believe that the burner itself is a bit more powerful than a PC's. Once again, I'll have to double-check.

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

Recordable CDs were actual "Burners" when first released..

Second generation "Burners" changed to the dye "phase change" type..

Google has the answers..

I have a couple thousand CDR and DVDR that I will be happy to send to someone. They will never get used by me.

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-Chris

There were a couple of shows around my area that I used to burn a compilation disc, with key changes already made, to take to their shows so I would use my burners for that. It has been quite a while since I have used a blank cd or dvd for anything. Holy Cow Bazza is right it is dead technology.