Karaoke Forums

I saw a very interesting thing last night at karaoke. I was singing the new Ronnie Dunn song called "Kiss You There" and at the end of the song after the credits page was displayed, there was one more page that came up on the screen.

The final screen had one line of text on it that caught my attention immediately.

"Copyright 2013 Chartbuster Karaoke"

Does anyone have any explanation for this? I thought Chartbuster was supposed to be out of business?

It also says 'Copyright 2013 Chartbuster Karaoke' on 'All Kinds Of Kind' by Miranda Lambert.

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They're not really out of business.

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

I don't think that too many people actually believed that Chartbuster was ever really "out of business" but at least they were trying to disguise Digitrax as an entirely different company for a little while. The fact that their tracks looked exactly like Chartbuster tracks was a dead give-away that the same people were making these newer tracks. It seems to be business as usual for many of these karaoke companies. Why should it be any different for one of the biggest karaoke companies than it is for the smaller companies like All Hits and the like?

They do whatever they want until they get caught by someone and then they just hang out a new shingle with a new name and go on as if nothing ever happened....until they get caught again. Rinse and repeat.

I called my KJ friend and he checked something out for me. It seems like all of the Karaoke Cloud tracks for the last three months have the Chartbuster copyright notice attached at the end of the songs.

Things that make you go Hmmm.

Maybe someone needs to pass this little bit of info onto the company that sued them into bankruptcy.

I still haven't heard the final outcome of that did Chartbuster pay them or just sluff them off?

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I like everyone when I first meet them. If you don't like me that's not my problem it's YOURS!
A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet

I'm actually pretty certain that Chartbuster Karaoke, as it once existed, is no more. The assets were believed to have been sold off and, to my knowledge, the recording assets stayed in TN and are known to us now as DigiTraxx. We know that Piracy Recovery LLC was somehow a spinoff of that sale. The only mystery to me is what has or will become of the recordings and whose name will they bear?

CB may somehow live on as pieces of its former self, but I happen to know that, as it once was, CB is long gone.

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I'm not a cheerleader, but I paid for my pom poms with my own money!

Then why do the new Digitrax songs say "Copyright 2013 Chartbuster Karaoke" on them? You would think that they would be trying to keep that afilliation on the down low?

Don't know. We know that much of the old staff stayed on, so it could be that it is just an oversight. Or, we know that Chartbuster's assets were sold off. Perhaps the agreement that CB had with the publishers was not considered an asset, or maybe it went with the recording assets. As crazy as the licensing is, maybe DT is somehow forced into recording certain songs under the CB name because the licensing is explicitly non-transferable. Or, maybe the new owners of the CB library are tolling certain songs to DT.

As mentioned, I was shared some details as to the last days at CB. That knowledge, plus the fact that nobody in their right mind would walk away from the goodwill associated with the name "Chartbuster Karaoke" unless they absolutely had to makes it absolutely certain that CB, as we know it, is long gone.

Also, consider how much time, money and effort goes into creating a new brand.

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I'm not a cheerleader, but I paid for my pom poms with my own money!

the funny part is that the CB name and trademark belongs to PRLLC. could the association between PRLLC and DTE be more than was previously stated?

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

I think it's extremely naive to consider CB-DTE-PRR anything other than the typical Karaoke maker shell game. With every shell game, there is a show. I would bet with certainty that the CB name would gladly be offered in sacrifice of paying the huge court loss.

Well, someone (or some institution) owns the CB library. We know the trademark seems to be with Piracy Recovery, and we know that there was a relationship with that firm and the old CB staff or officers. Maybe that relationship still exists, but the dynamics have changed.

But the bottom line is that nobody should be suspicious that the CB name lives on. That library is somewhere, and it's worth a lot of money. I'm surprised that we're just now seeing it pop up because I'm sure whoever owns it would have started distribution back up, if they had the resources.

If I had to make a wager, I'd bet on a bank owning it and, just like a foreclosed home, they're not going to do anything with it other than offer the whole thing for sale, and they'll sit on it until it sells.

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I'm not a cheerleader, but I paid for my pom poms with my own money!

Well as far as I know the official excuse/story is that Digitrax did buy the ENTIRE catalog, but have been unable to obtain liscensing for downloads for a large portion of it.

This actually makes sense to me, because if you are still able to go to the select-a-track site in the uk, you will find that there are more chartbuster/digitrax songs available than in the US.

Absolutely no different that the amount of movies you can watch between what is available on netflix in Canada, and what is available in the US *not to mention you can't even get hulu in Canada unless you use a proxy server *

-James

THE SONGS THAT I HAVE SEEN THE CHARTBUSTER COPYRIGHT DATA ON ARE ALL NEW SONGS. THESE ARE NOT SONGS THAT WERE PREVIOUSLY CHARTBUSTER TRACKS THAT ARE NOW BEING RE-RELEASED. IT'S AS IF THE FOLKS AT CHARTBUSTER ARE SUBLIMINALLY GIVING THE CAVS PEOPLE "THE BIRD" AND SAYING, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.

Being as I have not seen this and you have did you write Cavs about it?

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I like everyone when I first meet them. If you don't like me that's not my problem it's YOURS!
A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet

When the bank foreclosed on the old Chartbuster Karaoke assets, part of those assets were the software suites used to create the karaoke videos ("renders"), specifically, the implementation of KTools that had been previously used. Those particular assets were leased to DigiTrax Entertainment to be used in the creation of new tracks, as well as the re-rendering of the existing library, of which DigiTrax is the exclusive licensee.

The copyright notice at the end is a template that's changed usually once per year (to update the year of copyright notice). That message does not appear in when playing back the video in KTools - which is where the Quality Control steps were implemented - it's appended during the rendering process.

By accident, one of our technicians loaded in an old template and did not change the company name when the date was changed to the correct integer. Since there was no indication this happened during the QC process, a number of tracks went out with the incorrect copyright notice.

This triggered a major change in our QC process, as well as a complete re-render at all resolutions of the affected tracks to correct the notice. All the affected songs were then replaced in each instance in our own databases as well as with our downstream distribution partners. You can see the end result of the re-rendering process of the track mentioned at the top of this thread here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxbxMfHP0bI

You would think that all of the templates that may have mentioned Chartbuster, in any way, would have been deleted a long time ago.... unless someone thought that they may be useful at some point in the future.