Karaoke Forums

There is no aguement, but you ARE making two mis-statements:

Singers with large repertoires have their info recorded on paper, not in my skull. Please don't put claims in my mouth- I already have enough problems.

You stated that singer history will never be an option for me, though I have and use one at every show, and have explained how it works thoroughly.. I assume that you meant a PC based history, but didn't clarify. Either that or you don't believe anything but a PC history ( a very recent add-on in regard to the history of professional karaoke hosting) counts?

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

Speaking for all PC based hosts - singer history typically includes every song a singer has ever performed, how many times, when they performed it each time, possibly what venue they performed it at, key & tempo changes.

There are very few people in the world that can memorize song histories for thousands of singers, how many times each song in their history was performed, when and where they performed each of those songs......you get my point (even if you will argue against it).

Sure, some of the info means basically nothing at all. But the PC remembers it just the same and gives hosts some unique reporting abilities that you cannot replicate from your head or from paper without a tremendous amount of effort.....IF AT ALL.

I suppose if I personally worked some smaller venues where there were 10-15 regulars and very few net new people, I could retain much of it in my head. But those aren't the kinds of venues I work, nor do I want to work those kinds of venues. I prefer larger venues with lots of turnover and lots of diversity. There have been many, many nights where my downtown Seattle gig has had 50 people on a Friday, and 50 brand new people I have never seen before on Saturday. The next weekend may bring in 50 brand new people again.

Only a savant could remember that much information.....

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-Chris

If I was that good I would be playing "21"

Accurate reporting requires accurate data.

If you ran a car lot and every time you sold a car you deleted it completely from your inventory program instead of marking it sold you would lose the ability to easily find

How many cars did I sell in the last six months?
How many of those cars had automatic transmissions?
What was the most popular color?
and on and on

A hosting program needs to do the same with singer's histories.
Removing a song from a singer's history should not delete it completely from the database.

Say you want to rank your singers by who has sung the most songs in the last year at all of your shows.

Your program reports that Mark and Sue have both sung 140 songs each.

Sue comes up to you and says "I don't want to sing country songs anymore so I want to remove them from my history.

Well designed hosting program just marks them as inactive and hides them unless the KJ toggles a button between "Show Current History" and "Show All History"

Not so well designed hosting program simply deletes all traces of those 40 country songs Sue had in her history.

You forgot to write right down the results from your number of songs sung report so you run it again.

Well designed hosting program still says Top singers were Mark and Sue tied at 140

Not so well designed hosting program now says Mark alone at the top with 140 and Sue way down there only 100.

Which program would you lose a little respect and trust in with those results?

Exactly!

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

Not sure why you'd delete a song from a singer history - unless they simply told you to (which I still don't ) or you made a mistake and added a song to someone elses list. I know MTU Hoster if you delete a singer song from their history - it's gone from the database as well.
It will still show up in the playlist and singer log report as that is stored under a different method and amended as each song is played.

MTU Hoster can produce an accurate singer log history even if you delete all singers - as the reports are created from the actual nightly playlists and not the databases.

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

That is it exactly . . . The singer log (more accurately the show log) should be independently stored in it's own table.


The table should/could show
Date_time
venue_id
KJ_ID
disc_id
artist
song title
singer_id
key
tempo

Handling the data logging like that means you can change the singer history list into what it really is in the first place . . . A list of songs the singer likes to sing that includes the version, key, and tempo they last used.

Their history of singing those songs including last date sung, num of times sung, versions sung, keys tried, and tempos changed, are all easily retrievable from the show history table shown above.

Singer Song list entries can then be added, modified, hidden, or completely deleted without affecting anything that has happened in the past.

You may be misunderstanding what I'm getting at. If I delete a song(s) from a singer history - it's gone, the only way to retrieve the info is to re-enter the song back into their history. I cannot retrieve ANY data from the report logs other then to create reports only, this is all they can be used for - now since this is in a separate file that grows each time a song is sung and completely independent from any other database, you MIGHT be able to put it all into an Excel sheet and sort by the singer name & maybe copy the data and re-add it manually into the softwares singer database by actually opening it up through Access or something similar and pasting in the correct format.
I've been actively using my report logs since 2012 and can see what was song (how many time, when, nights, who did them, etc) in any date range from that point.

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

That is the reason the system I described above would be the best way for a hosting program to save the info.

You could remove songs from a singer's song list without affecting their underlying history of songs sung in the past since that information is saved in a different table.

With the addition of a toggle switch as an option when you have clicked on a singer and have his/her list displayed you can make the hosting program display only the singer's current song list or All of the songs the singer has ever sung.

If you deleted a song by accident you would just toggle to show all songs and click on the song to restore it back into his current Singer list. Since the underlying data is still in your database in the ShowHistory table you will still have his version, key, tempo and dates sung.

I think that may be more involved than you think. I'm not a programmer so don't know.
As far as accidently deleting a song, the program I use has a double safety to prevent that, if you ok it twice, then you meant to delete it. IMO there is no reason to delete anyones history so having a way to back it up wouldn't be important to me, nothing will be deleted and I always make a monthly copy of the singers database to take home - so even if I did accidently lose their history, I can always get everything back up to current minus the current month. I don't get the reasoning for needing to hide songs in their list.

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

Handles your previous comment on a singer wanting to delete a song from their list ie Sue not wanting those 40 country songs in her list anymore.
You can delete them from her singer list (just removes the title from her list) as she requests and they will no longer show but the history for them is not deleted and is safely tucked away in the showhistory table.

Six months down the road when she suddenly decides to go country again you just toggle to show all and her list now shows all of those songs with her complete history of singing them.

She decides she wants to do white lightning and you just click on it as you normally would and the program adds it back into her singer list ready to go as if it never left.

It all harks back to the advantages of separating the data so that deleting the title from a singer's list does not affect the history in any way.

Much easier to just reactivate the song and get all your history of it back for the singer than it is to try to remember six months later what version and key she preferred for the song and add it from scratch.

I think it is awesome, especially since I share hosting with another Kj. My singers feel special when I 'remember' their songs even though they know we keep a history. Plus when a new singers needs help with picking a song I can question their genre and if not familiar with it I can check out another singers band choices that is in that same style. Win-Win

Joe in training for Vegas:

A Singing Savant.

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In Music Is Sanity

From Chris: "Only a savant could remember that much information..."
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Or simply a Karaoke Host who is literate enough to read what has been written down.

I don't know how long yoh have been hosting, but in my decades in the business PCs, being a relatively late arrival, were not part of the equation for quite awhile.

We long time hosts learned how to do what needed to be done without depending on anything but mind, pen, and paper. Almost all of us can do what I do, with none being a savant.
I love my PC and my tablet, and find all that they can do for me and my business terrific - but I have no problem operating independently of them- with the ex eption of my karaoke book software. I'd quit if I had to type my books by hand...

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

i could see it when you started and there was the DK 1-99 and a handful of Pioneer LD, but with the selection of songs having gone through the roof i don;t know how you can keep up with hundreds of songs for each of hundreds of singers.

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

I love the history function on my program. I use it just to keep the rotation in order. I will put songs in from the history just as place holders. They have the option to change the song, which is a quick thing, but 50% of the time they are happy with the choice, and the more songs they sing, over time, the more choices I have for them.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

Here are my final words on this -

Joe - I bet you cannot not keep my 400+ song repertoire complete with versions, key changes, how many times I have performed it, when I last performed it, and where I last performed it......in your head.

If you keep all of that on notecards, how many notecards are dedicated just to me to track all of that information?

Computers enable us to do more and maintain information more efficiently. Period. There is nothing an ODB host can do that a PC based host can't do - including play customer discs. The same cannot be said going the other direction.

That said.....some of the things that PC based hosts can do that ODB hosts cannot, aren't necessarily critical to running a karaoke program. They are simply value added items that PC based hosts can use to differentiate themselves from the rest of the crowd.

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-Chris

I fully agree that there a few things a PC host can do that an OMD host can't. Very few, but certainly there.

I also agree that PC can keep BETTER histories, if the need is required.

Thing is, my average si gers top out at around a 30 song current repertoire. I have ONE singer that tops 100, but he never repeats anyway. In other words, what I do works for my patrons.

This gives me that much more time for promoting, advertising, and expanding my client base, especially for private events and less time stuck playing with the PC. While the computer isinvaluable to running the business end, it just isn't needed for the show.

No knock. Keep in mind that I ran PC for a year or two way back for small private events. Worked fine, but I simply preferred using discs. Just personal preference.

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

not arguing to argue, i disagree here. i spend less time working histories than you. when they request a song and i put it in, it is in their history, version, key change, tempo change and all. i do not have to find their card, write it down, then put it back. i know it's not much time, but you made it sound like we have to go home and do all this after the fact.

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