Karaoke Forums

I'm wondering if anyone knows where in the New York City area you can go to rent karaoke discs. They're pretty expensive, and if I could just rent some discs for a party and then return them, that would be great.

Also- does anyone know a good place to get Japanese karaoke, like DAM?

Can't help on the rental question. For foreign karaoke, check out acekaraoke.com. They advertise on this site. I have purchased a bunch of foreign discs from them. Not sure if they have it CDG (vs. DVD...), if they don't call 'em and ask. Good luck.

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Sounds Great! Entertainment
Bartlett, Illinois

Your best bet will be to start calling the local karaoke companies & see if they rent discs & systems out to the public. Expect to pay a pretty sizeable deposit if they do - at least the few companies I know of here take pretty hefty deposits, some the replacement cost of the discs.

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Check with local DJ's, audio/music stores, and even the places that sell the discs.

A local music store (sheet music mostly) also sells CDG's and has a small machine and the 2 SC Party Paks they rent. (No, they're not in NYC but it's meant to give you an idea of what some places might offer).

If you don't mind driving down to Kentucky you can check with DooWop (they rent disc) but I'm sure you'll find somebody locally that offers rentals.

Just so you know, for a home show you could always purchase 5-10 DVD's (about $100-200) and a DVD mixer add-on (about $50 w/ a cheap mic) for something you might do every once in a while (a couple times a year).

Some one came by my show last night and wanted to rent out my music. ALL 500 discs. Yeah right dude what the hell you smoking. I told him I would burn the whole thing for him for 15 dollars a disc. 7,500 dollars cash up front. He just walked away. Damn what if had said ok. That would have been tempting. ................

i don't rent discs, i rent me

since original poster did not say where they are from, cannot really direct them properly

I talked to another customer, who said (yep u guessed it) that she rents the cd, takes it home copies it, and uses them in her show. Which i had to inform her that i hope she gets caught cause it is illegal to possess that copied cd iwthout the original

I'm from New York City. I don't know if you can just rent the CDGs without renting a system (or hiring someone to host your party), but 1 person you can try is Dave Zwirsky from Expressway Music. I believe that he rents out systems (I have no idea what he charges). Also, the ONLY place in NYC that sells (almost) a full line of CDGs is Colony Records. They might also rent systems (don't know if that includes CDGS). Colony is a place to use ONLY if you are desperate. One other place you might try is East Coast Karaoke (in Deer Park, Long Island).

unfortunately, you'll always have those that don't want the investment.

I just point them in the way of "streaming" karaoke... where they pay a montly fee, and get the song on their computer.

Either that, or go out and buy the disc and then sell it on ebay afterwards! sheesh!

Which is why I pointed him to the DVD's. There is a line of DVD's (with cheesy videos nonetheless) that have about 50 songs per disc. I paid about $20 for the one I have (5th in a series - don't have the first 4). For what you'd pay for the rental of even a decent selection of music you could pick up 5-10 DVD's, and use your home DVD player. Add in the cheap mic mixer for home karaoke (usually under $50) and for the occasional home party you're set. Or drop the $370 on a CAVS202 w/ the 66 disc Sweet Georgia Brown set (The Chartbuster SCDG's are about $180 each).

There are better ways to satisfy a need for karaoke at a party than to rent a bunch of discs - unless your real intention is to copy the discs instead of using them for a party.

DUH ! Maybe its just so.cal but I figured every KJ with a big catalogue has been hit up to "RENT" out thier music. Seems like all the new kj's dont want to invest like SOME of us did. Hell I dont even bring my duplicator to my shows....WAY to tempting............

the problem with renting out your disks to someone else is the possibility of them duplicating your library... example:

Rent out the system for saturday night.. they pick the system up saturday afternoon and drop it back off on sunday morning... that is a WHOLE lot of time to fire up the cd burner and make their own collection by the time they have to return it in the morning... that is why alot of music stores (if not all of them) now have a NO RETURN policy on ANY cd/DVD that has been opened because the ability to record the content is so readily available... I don't think you can buy a new name brand PC without it coming equipped with a cd burner of some kind or a DVD burner... you can rent my system and do all the work but I will be sitting behind you enjoying the show and going home with the disks at the end of the night...

the temptation is there and it is WAY too big of a risk to chance... they might be out working my gigs next weekend with a copy of MY disks... no thanks... - tig

Yeah, I had a guy come up[ to me about a month ago, told me "Hey man you have a nice selection, I just opened up a Karaoke Co. here in town, and I was wondering if we could do some business", so he asks me..."How many songs do you have?" I said.. well not counting dups a little under 7k, he says. well could I burn some of your songs? I will let you burn some of mine!
At this point I want to punch the guy in the head very HARD, but I am at work, so I stay calm. I ask him, how many songs do you have?
He replies around 1700.

NOW...why on gods green earth would I want to...

A. Help out someone who plans to compete with me in the same damn town.

B. Let him burn 5k of my songs he don't have, and I probably have everything he does.

So I politely (Grrrr) told him I was not interested, and he got pissed and left. He actually got PISSED!!!

People truely amaze me everyday with their constant idiocy.

Or you could have told him that's illegal to do and to go F himself.

A little off topic but I had some LOWLIFE come by my show and try to sell me a whole poop load of karaoke cdg's. He quoted me a super low price that just smelled of stolen merchandise. No thanks sweetie I told him. I probably had all the songs already and you know someone else with less morals will jump all over that. Instant Karmas gonna get ya! And we all shine on on and on and on.......

Last night on of the singers who wanted to sing a song that I didn't have started telling me about a bar about 30 miles away that makes there own cd's. She told me I should go over and talk to this person,and they have rights to make and sell these disks. And that they are selling them to all the bars & Kj's in the area.

Tempting for two seconds.....

I guess the only thing I can say to them is enjoy. I'll build my collection the old fashion way. Blood, Sweat & a whole lot of money.

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the idea of somebody renting a whole library annd copying it overnight is just not going to happen with most. Most people would not know how to copy a CDG correctly in the first place. and using a computer, you cannot do them that quick

Most people DONT know how to copy. Every kid over the age of ten is burning cd's cdg's dvd's ALL the time. Allmost everyone I know has a burner, copier or duplicator or something these days. Maybe its just a so. cal. thing...............

Who needs to actually copy all of them before returning? Just rip the BIN files off the disc to your hard drive. That only takes a couple minutes. Besides if I was really interested in copying a library I'd sure take the time to set up and make sure I could get clean copies before hand. And yes, it's time consuming but with a fast computer, burner and CD reader you can do about 20 an hour disc to disc. If I rent a system for a day and do nothing but copy I can do 400-500 discs. If I'm just ripping to a large hard drive I can even more with a fast reader (probably closer to 30 an hour) - 600-800 discs in 24 hours.

To be honest, I can go on IRC right now and download at least 5000 tracks (like far more). If I subscribe to newsgroups and pulled constantly I can get well over another 2000 tracks a month. Stealing the music isn't that hard. If I just 'had' to have a track for some reason I'm willing to bet I can request it on here and have it within 72 hours. It's ethics that prevents someone from doing this, not the threat of law enforcement, prosecution, or anything else.

H E double hockey sticks Ed, you don't even have to rip em to BIN because there is software that will rip them directly from disk into MP3+G files and save ya a whole lotta space... MiRC you can download 50K-60K files, probably more... I should know... as far as "most" people don't know how to burn a disk??? try and buy a computer today that doesn't come with a CD+RW or DVD+RW and a CD software burning program- you would be hard pressed to find a manufacturer that doesn't... "waitaminute tig, not all burners can read and burn the sub code of a CDG disk"... alot of newer cd burners and especially dvd burners CAN read and burn CDG disks with the right software... even models not listed on CDRwin's list of compatible burners.. I have an off the shelf Polaroid 4X DVD burner that SHOULD not be able to read cdg sub code, but one time while burning cdg's, I spaced what burner I had selected and used the DVD burner... guess what... perfect cdg copy... who woulda thunk it... more and more people have started bringing in their own personal disks to shows and if they had even the slightest desire to increase their "personal" collection it would not be that hard to find the information and what they need to have in order to do it... I know locally a music store that you can rent one of their systems, with disks for the weekend- with a 52X, or faster, yamaha CD burner that wouldn't take long at all to copy or rip a colleciton like that.. and still have time to go to church on sunday ... keep on singing- tig