Karaoke Forums

If they can offer the HELP "license" for everything but GEM, why not just offer the product as well? The "license" fee sounds like arm twisting (give us money or get sued) either way. "Buy the HELP "license" and we'll throw in the product you've been using illegally for years anyway for free!" I mean, what would be the difference?

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DJ Don

Jim can provide his specific reason(s), but I can paint part of this picture....

Ensuring there is enough bandwidth to deliver video and sound quality at scale is neither cheap nor technically "easy". I know it seems that anyone can just setup a service overnight (and technically one can...... with enough money), but there is a lot of thought that goes into it BEYOND the legalities. Predicting peak loads, number of concurrent connections, concurrent use and file locking, and more come into question.

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-Chris

All true.. The "pipe" needed to support a large subscriber base would need the funding of iTunes or the like.
Not cheap, and that does not begin to discuss the license issues.

I don't see this as a suitable business plan..

Of course, I've been wrong before.

Ball's in your court Jim..

seems I've read about or seen a streaming service that lets you download the songs so you don't need a internet connection at the venue, you just have to log in once a month to validate your subscription or the songs you've downloaded are not longer usable. I may be wrong, but I'm fairly sure I've seen a service like this.

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I only do private parties, and you're not invited

There are a few. There's the karaokecloud with digitrax, which in my opinion is an epic failure/waste of money because unless things have been resolved, they lost over half their catalog of songs virtually overnight.

Then there is the karafun subscription. The professional version is over $100/month. Considering that some hosts in some areas are lucky to be making $75-100/show it would be extremely hard for a legitimate business to turn a profit.

As for PEP they don't really have the resources to stream a catalog.. in fact, they don't really have a catalog anymore. Except for a few songs after 2007 they sold their entire catalog of music to Stingray so if they wanted to stream that, they'd have to get them involved, and I'm pretty sure they have no interest.

The only reason they still can sell things like their GEM series is because they purchased a whole boatload of licensed sets thru the UK before the rules changed.

Evntually those sets will run out tho, and the only money generated from them will be if someone croaks and they get a set back, or if someone sells their existing GEM license to someone else. Oh ya and the renewal fees, but those are so negligable that it's pretty much irrelivant.

I am extremely hopeful that evntually they will get around to producing new music, but after nearly 7 years of promises that have fell through, I am starting to wonder.

-James

I'm sure that it all boils down to the enough meat on the bone argument that Jim of SC has made. The reason no new production after 7 years of promises is SC couldn't even get enough advance sales to merit a try at bringing out new product. Most hosts are a bit cautious of buying a pig in a poke, they want to see what the new product would be like. If advance sales is the standard for new production I would imagine it will be awhile before any new production will be forth coming.

Now I’m really confused, if PEP sold their music catalog what are they charging for ?

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I only do private parties, and you're not invited

If you can answer that question to my satisfaction then you will be doing better than Jim has been able to do all of these years.

for their trademark showing up on screen.


but remember the reason he gave for that...
hosts showed that we don't want to pay for music.
i think KSF, SBI, Sunfly would disagree, but keep the whole story going correctly

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

I don't think that it is so much hosts don't want to pay for the music, but rather they object to paying for goods sight unseen, ahead of time. Maybe if there was a sample maybe things would be different? Without any new production SC is just a company using the legal system to drive sales and licensing.

so they own nothing but the trademarks from SC & CB ? how are they selling the package that allows you to use but not own the 6000 or so Sound Choice songs if they no longer own the contents ?

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I only do private parties, and you're not invited

Well this is the problem PEP is trying to as they say recover monies owed to trademarks they either own or have obtained legal rights to. Of all the labels that are available to hosts these are the only two that are currently suing hosts and venues. Most are out of business and are not seeking damages. Many issued their product without paying the proper fees to do so, like Music Mastero and Panorama. That is why those two companies went out of business, mainly. SC has a limited number of GEM sets they produced before the changes were made concerning overseas product sold in the U.S. As far as SC is concerned you can lease the GEM series or you can obtain a HELP license, or you can do door number 3 have an audit, that you pay for. All of this to prevent your business from going to court possibly, at least as far as PEP is concerned. CB is a little more complicated since the market was flooded with CB product prior to it's collapse. There is some CB product out here like SCDG's that were made under the CAVS trademark and PEP would have no standing to sue a host on that content of his or her library. At least that is what I was told by CAVS a couple of years ago. Even if you get the blessing of PEP it doesn't mean you can't be sued by other copyright holders such as publishers, if they want to bother with the lowly KJ?

correct, we don't want to pay for random mystery songs and this was mentioned my most of us here (some bought in but not many).
i just said that he said it showed that people don't want to pay for music.

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

Door Number 4: I don't have to do any of that. I am an ODB KJ.... I use nothing but CDGs. SC/PEP will NEVER go after me.

And, you forgot about Door Number 5: Don't use that brand at all. There are several KJs here (Chip, to name one), who don't use that product, and run a perfectly good and entertaining show.

1) they are not selling them, they are leasing them 5 years at a time
2) they had them made under U.K. laws after licensing the music tracks from Stingray (to whom they sold the music in 2007 i believe)
3) since they do not own the copyright on the music, the trademark is all they can sue for so it's still legal

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

The difference is Paradigm when Jim of PEP says people don't want to pay, the way I feel he is talking about the lack of interest is because people won't buy when they can get it for free. In my opinion he is focused mainly on the illegal trade of the product, and ignores those hosts that would pay if there was a product. I guess that is about 5% of the current hosts, not enough to support new production. That is why there are so few sources for new music content for Karaoke.

I didn't forget cue it's just that I managed to get back on the forum here, and I didn't want to sound negative right out of the box. I have used option number 5 for all the time I was still active in the commercial part of hosting. It's just that I kinda made people tired of mentioning option #5. The thing with number 4 is that while the likely hood of them ever coming after you is extremely remote, they still have the option if they decide to. True they wouldn't get anywhere, let's hope they have other people to annoy. Merry Christmas long time no see.

i agree that is what Jim is saying, but disagree on only 5% willing to pay.

i don't think any of us have issue paying Karaoke Version
i don't think any of us have issue paying Karaoke.net (the newest)
i don't think any of us have issue paying Sunfly
i don't think any of us have issue paying SBI
i don't think any of us have issue paying Karaoke Cloud
i don't think any of us have issue paying any company that gives us what professional hosts have asked for

1) the right tracks (KV and KSF has been doing right on this, SBI especially)
2) produced in time to be usable (KV seems to be ahead of the curve here)
3) quality recording (all the manus are doing top quality in this area)
4) made available in the most popular format (mp3+g, which most hosts use)
5) sold at a reasonable rate
6) available for a-la-carte purchases

the ones who have done that, are getting our business as shown here and other boards as we talk about the new stuff we bought. just look at the new songs threads...

we ARE willing to buy, and ARE buying from others who are continuing to stay in business and sell.
i was NOT wiling to pay for random mystery songs that may get produced that i may or may not need.
I and even Smoothedge have said we would buy a-la-carte songs from SC if they did what the other companies are doing.
they did not get enough bites because there was not actually any product offered to buy, only a dream of a possibility.

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

That 5% legal I mentioned is the figure I always see thrown out by PEP, that means out of 50,000 plus hosts in the U.S. only about 2500 are legal.

It isn't hosts generating the bulk of sales for KSF, SBI, Sunfly or any other online portal. It's everyday users generating the sales. Every host in the world could stop buying their karaoke music and they would all survive.

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-Chris