Karaoke Forums

If it's $19.99 a month, you bet they will! If I can spend less money to get the new songs I need, I'm in. I am not collecting them on a shelf to show my friends. I am looking to lower my expenses.

Anything more than that and they can forget it. As I have said ad nauseum, it's all about the price...not the concept.



You must not have experience in "any other business". Leasing happens ALL the time. Contractors lease that bulldozer, warehouses lease the forklifts. Business lease cars and retail space, your dentist leases his dental chairs. It is an extremely common tactic for real businesses and nothing to break out the pitchforks & torches for.

And leasing such equipment must be at a price that is minimal percentage points of the income realized, or one will go bankrupt. I do see the benefit of the Cloud being a set price: One goal of all this should be for the KJs to get to a point where they are not in constant concern of looking over their shoulders for manus/lawyers/investigators interrupting their business...

Hi Bazza! How are you, today??!! That was a good example you gave us. However, we're not talking about contracting, sub-contracting, leasing, etc. We're talking about karaoke. And, the majority of the people want to OWN rather than rent.

I personaly will not pay $19.95 for a subscription to the Karaoke Cloud. I will not pay any price, and neither will most KJ's. There are other alternatives. Chartbuster offered downloads and custom CDG's. Why can't they? (whoever they may be) The cloud is not the only source for new music.

Now, not every karaoke producer is going to use the cloud. There will be many companies with good new music to buy from. Again, like I've said a million times, if they follow Amazon's lead, it could be very successful. But in it's present form, it's a disaster.

But wait, let's take a look at our poll, shall we Bazza?

Wow! A whopping 76% want nothing to do with it. What does that tell you. And what message is that sending to the industry.

In any case, it's always a pleasure to read your comments, Bazza. They usually give me a laugh.

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

No, we are talking about a business. Which I have. I do not run a charitable karaoke hobby, which many around here it appears do. I am in business to make money.

Just like that contractor who isn't going to hand his bulldozer down to his kids, neither am I collecting karaoke songs for old age to gaze at on a shelf. I am running a business.



Yes, yes, we know. You fear the concept. "Not even for a dollar" I believe you said, which is a crazy statement if you think about it.
I'll bet a poll saying "Would you use the Cloud for $1.00" would have much different results, don't you?



...at $199? You are correct. PRICE I have always said is the differentiator. Not the concept.



"They" are Digitrax. Don't you know that? And it appears they will. Haven't you been following along the Latshaw threads?



AND...it appears they are. (SHOCKER!) Like "the cloud" now? How about a poll?



You mean your flawed, generic, no details poll?



It tells me you put up a worthless poll. You are asking people to vote...on what exactly? Who? For how much? With what capabilities?

It's nothing more than your personal witch hunt against a mere concept. It's like saying "Would you use ROBOTS?" It's such a broad question, it's meaningless.

So! It appears they will now provide downloads. Guess all those people wont go for it since they voted "Not a chance!" to "The Cloud"....right?

After all, the poll says so.

I deleted my post... Saw the answer in another thread.

leasing is a viable option in business, this is a particular case where it may not be. imagine the leasing company going to the contractor and taking back the bulldozers. "you can still use the backhoe and grader,but Caterpillar doesn't want the bulldozers out on lease anymore." or the forklifts being taken back because the company doesn't want them available anymore. when it is not a tangible item like a bulldozer, i think that part of it gets lost. it would not be acceptable in any other situation to just have leased material taken back because somebody else said so when you have followed the lease agreement to a "t", but in this instance it is somehow acceptable? that is the part i disagree with. all the material being available on the cloud is fine (the cloud as the concept of music floating in cyberspace) but not the lease at will idea. adding the downloads so that Mr. Brooks (or whomever) can not tell me i can no longer use the rented material because i purchased it. personally, that is my only beef with the program as it stands.

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

It is a flawed poll.

Too many variables.

1) As evidenced by the discussions, MOST KJ's don't understand how the Cloud model works.
2) DigiTrax proposal is just that - a proposal. It is not the final product and is subject to change that may be more appealing to Pro KJ's.
3) Pricing is a huge factor, but so is the level of access. It is actually very difficult to separate the two. Examples -

$199/mo for access to everything

Existing KJ's won't subscribe because they already have it.
New KJ's can get their foot in the door, but after 1-2 years they will find that they have paid the equivalent of a purchased and owned library and the value proposition decreases significantly.

$19.99/mo

More appealing to existing KJ's. Might gain access to a few older tracks they never picked up, and that is a decent price for access to new music.
New KJ's - no brainer. Who wouldn't give up 4 trips to Starbucks for access to a massive library?
The glaring issue is that such a low price opens to the door to an onslaught of new KJ's and histrory has shown us that if the price of music is super-low (as in zero for pirates), the quality of the shows goes way down and more importantly, the rate a KJ can charge is reduced because new KJ's have significantly reduced overhead and the undercutting runs rampant.

$99/mo

Falls somewhere in between but still isn't good for the industry. Not pricey enough to prevent KJ rates from being impacted. Possibly too pricey for existing KJ's depending on the selection of new releases.

I firmly believe that having a tiered pricing system is the way it should be implemented to preserve the industry while still generating profit for the provider.

Charge a low monthly fee for access to new music. Not sure what that price should be, but based on the "How much do you spend on new music" poll, going above $49.99 makes it a little harder to digest.

Charge a much higher monthly fee for access to the "old stuff". Again, I don't know what that would be, but it need to be high enough that it doesn't allow for a glut of new KJ's to hit the market, and low enough that new KJ's can afford it at todays KJ rates.

Alternately, charge a one time fee (in the order of several thousands dollars) for access to the older library and then continue with the low monthly rate above for continued access to that older library.

-Chris

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-Chris

Sorry...this short-sighted approach will not work. The model has already been established: new DJs can enter the industries for pennies on the dollar compared to a '90s DJ...enough said.....

I am not suggesting it is the only way. The option is to proceed with how they seem to be going. In that case the entire KJ industry needs to be ready to change what and how they do it. If they (DigiTrax) have even moderate success in the Pro market with the current model, I believe we can expect KJ Rates to fall again.

-Chris

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-Chris

Or 8 trips to DD.

And it looks like someone might be having an epiphany. Anyone who believes any part of any manus internal goals have been to help KJs make more money is certainly delusional. It may have intermittently and regionally occurred over the years, but is was an incidental occurrence. It is very apparent what has happened: loopholes have been being used on BOTH sides of the fence, and now efforts are being made to create some sort of regulatory situation. As soon as the right entity and scenario occurs, this attempt will come to a screeching halt. I don't know...I guess one can feel bad for the manus, but the situation is what it is, and the current model will have limited success.....

I can tell you, this one here doesn't feel bad for the mfrs. They did it to themselves by not doing anything to stop the piracy from the beginning. They just let it happen. MOST of the mfrs have either gone away, or kept working. ONLY SC is in the business of trying to retrieve what they lost, of course then there is Piracy Recovery. No others are pursuing this course of action. They are accepting the piracy issue, and continuing to make music, at least that is how it seems. The cloud will not be a solution.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

Piracy Recovery, LLC. is nothing more than a cancer. They don't produce anything, they NEVER produced anything, they don't even sell music. Their objective is simply to extort money from KJ's and use the court system to do it on a series of technicalities.

It is the true definition of "Trademark Trolling."

Welcome back Chip. It was a bit boring around here without you.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

I love it...it's a flawed poll...why? Because the results don't agree with your perspective? It seems to me the variables are not the issue...what is, is the concept, itself. Either people want it or they don't. I don't care what the variables are -- my answer won't change, and I'd lay odds that nobody else on the "no" side would change their response either. Not even if the price went down or the cloud included free ice cream with rainbow sprinkles.

If it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck.....

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Birdofsong

It's a flawed poll because.......it's a flawed poll. Has nothing to do with my perspective other than my perspective of how polling works.

If you are content to make decisions based upon incomplete information, go right ahead.



Stubborn ignorance is never a good thing. That is a life lesson my mother taught me long ago....

-Chris

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-Chris

Sorry but I gotta disagree on this one. If it meets a need and is the best answer to meet my need, I'm interested. I like the concept for me, just don't like a few things about it, the current suggested pricing is a no go (not even close).

I don't know what manus are going to be available.

I would want to put the available songs in my books without hand entering one at a time.

I want to see different price choices, lifetime subscription, monthly subscription, weekly subscription, one time subscription, and a free trial.

Another possibility is a "rental fee" per song. I rent songs as my singers choose them. That way I don't spend the same as a newbie who hasn't put together a library like mine. To me, that's the fairest way to treat hosts, each of us would have different needs when it comes to song choices. I think 20 cents per song would be a good starting point for debate. This would earn $12 per show if a host had no library what so ever and might only cost me a couple bucks per show. If said newbie had 3 shows per week, it would cost them $156 bucks per month. More shows they have, the more it costs them.

I want to know that once I'm locked in, none of the manus are going to back out (temporarily or permanently) such as viacom is doing to directv.

I want my subscription to cover two computers, one for my main and one for my backup. If I can't get it on my backup for the one price, I'm not interested, I have backup for everything and this cannot be an exception.

Are all the songs going to be tagged correctly? If I have 5 choices of a particular song/artist, will they be the same or will the book/kiosk or whatever displays the choices to my customers and me possibly spell or format each one differently. I've already spent tens of hours getting mine the way I like it.

Will my price and choices be the same as someone just starting to host? I have a pretty good library and don't want the same price and choices as a newbie. Again, I think the per song "rental fee" would take care of this.

All I can think of for now but if all of those are taken care of in my eyes, I will be interested. So I agree the poll is flawed and that's why I never participated in it as it was presented, I can't answer it truthfully as I don't know yet.

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KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

To be fair and kind, it might be best to refer to the poll as "incomplete"...

I have thrown out the possibility (which I haven't gotten any comment on ) that might be, let's call it, "the GEM Series on steroids", to be used by the manus as their instrument to extract funds from folks as part of future lawsuit settlements. If this is the case, then it might secure their participation for the unforseen future...

I am neither stubborn, nor ignorant (and the personal characterizations are really not appreciated). What I can tell you is that I don't like the concept, and I have several reasons for this. It wouldn't matter to me if you added bells and whistles, every manufacturer ever made, or lowered the price. It doesn't suit my needs. Period. I'm entitled to feel that way, and making that decision makes me neither stubborn, nor ignorant.

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Birdofsong