Karaoke Forums

So I have a question that I can't seem to find an answer to.

I'm assuming that when an artist records a track in a studio, that their vocals (or any independent mic/input) is a separate entity on the "master track."

Following this assumption, why do karaoke production companies re-record songs rather than simply licensing the master track and removing that input? It just seems like such a unnecessary cost for them to have these tracks re-recorded by musicians.

Is my initial assumption wrong here?

Thanks in advance.

It actually cheaper to rerecord it than to use because I believe there are added licensing needed for original tracks. Why on the other hand doesn't the original artists just create their own tracks is another good question.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

The "studio" musicians used the the Karaoke track get payed buy the hour(little bucks). The original artists get paid royalties (big bucks).

Taylor Swift is one artist who's karaoke tracks use the original music and back up vocals of her songs on her CD's. Disney's Karaoke Series does the same thing. And you can't get any closer to the actual original recordings then by releasing the original music for karaoke.

I wish more artists did this.

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

Not all artists and recording studios keep the master multi tracks. They will make a master 2 track of the final mix. This is especially true of older recordings when multi track tape was so expensive. The studios would erase their multi tracks after the final mix was mastered and approved. I don't know if that is as much true today with the advent of digital recording & hard drive space being so cheap.

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

i've got a queen karaoke album made by disney, with the original recording less freddie! absolutely amazing, love it. would happily pay over the odds for more like this

Thanks everyone for your responses.

Lonman wrote:
> Not all artists and recording studios keep the master multi tracks. They will make
> a master 2 track of the final mix. This is especially true of older recordings when
> multi track tape was so expensive. The studios would erase their multi tracks after
> the final mix was mastered and approved. I don't know if that is as much true today
> with the advent of digital recording & hard drive space being so cheap.

Thanks Lonman,

This seems to be the closest I've gotten to a "real" reason. The fact being that the multi-track literally doesn't exist (proving my assumption wrong) for older recordings. All the others are really just procedural and not because of hard truths.

I can only imagine given digital technologies that most mixes are now available as multi-track as you say.

Does anyone know if the production companies (I guess now it's basically just Digitrax) are moving toward original-track? I'd imagine it would cut their costs dramatically if negotiated correctly.

There have been a few "original" tracks recordings made over the years. Most notably the Motown originals. Taylor Swift released "Red" as a karaoke disc as well. But most of the karaoke companies produce their own backing tracks or contract with someone that does. SBI, Zoom, Sunfly seem to share backing tracks these days.

I still have not figured out the relationship between Pop Hits Monthly and Sing It Now, but they have shared backing tracks in the past (or maybe they still do).

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-Chris