Karaoke Forums

Hi all.

Not a KJ really, at least not a full-time one. I ran a weekly show for a couple years using Compuhost and the bar's computer.

New owners looking to hire me to do the same. I figure I'll use a laptop and buy Compuhost since I know it already. My question is about library.

I'd want a good basic starting point, with a decent assortment of country, rock and pop. Basic stuff I guess. Am I better off buying discs and discs until I put together a decent library, or is online 'cloud' type arrangement good?

My personal opinion is buy a good basic set. If you have plenty of money, the Sound Choice gem would Rock.

If not, buy an SCDG conversion program from RoxBox and buy up the Chartbuster 1-6 SCDGs, the Magic Tracks and the DK sets.

Spend another $200 for KJ Media Pro and even when you have no internet you can add tracks and effectively control 5-6000 additional tracks very cheaply.

Then start buying up the SC Foundation discs and others to upgrade over time along with downloads.

The Zoom packs on EBay are also great and very reasonably priced.

And don't sneeze at the ultra cheap House Party Karaoke discs you run across.

They are Sound Choice tracks under a different label. Exact same song lengths, same keys, same lettering and count in bars, same 4 click count in with chord, same background singers. All that's missing is the SC logo on the title screen.

If you have Compuhost then you don't necessarily need a library saved on your computer to start with. Compuhost has KJ Media Pro which you can purchase your songs individually as you run a show. You just buy the credits ahead of time and unlock the songs as you go.

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

I agree with buying. Why spend money to "rent" your music and have nothing to show for it.

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

I agree with Alan. If you've got internet access at your show to rent music, you can buy songs and download them on the fly just as easily, and you'll have them for life.

The only thing is why pay $2 song for downloads?

The convenience is great, but you can definitely beat the cost/track with scdgs

All the SCDG's listed are all older tracks pretty much. And the duplication factor between the Chartbuster, DK (I also have both) & Magic Tracks (never heard the quality of these personally) are pretty high since all put out many to most of the same tracks. There are only a handful of individual tracks between each set that the others didn't put out.
Download on a per request basis AFTER getting a decent 'core' set is the only way to go IMO.

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

Just remember if you do go with Sound Choice and/or Chartbuster purchases, you are going to have to register them with PEP. Make sure you look at their website for details.

Lonnie just out of curiosity do you know how many of the Chartbuster tracks are in your book currently?

I'd guess you have at least a few hundred maybe even a thousand of the songs, but probably on Sound Choice. For a guy starting out, that's not a feat easily duplicated.

The DK's have a lot of tracks from the 90s on. They generally sound good, but a few are in different keys and most do have a panflute or guitar guide. Sometimes the panflute is so soft it's passable, other times you may elect to replace it immediately with a download.

Magic Tracks are Sweet Georgia Brown. So low quality on many tracks, but a lot of tracks and some tracks only they made and the occasional gem they did pretty well.

The Zoom brand has a mega pack of 500 or so that's pretty cool now too with a lot of newer stuff to go with the old.

I don't know what your budget is, but with $300-$500 you can go to eBay/Craigslist and buy discs for a core library. Look for sets of discs from the same manu to avoid dupes. But also know that you WILL end up with dupes.

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-Chris