Karaoke Forums

This question is for the experianced KJ's ( and anyone else who wants to answer )

Knowing what you know today, what would you say is a respectable amount of titles you would need to consider yourself a TOP NOTCH host if you were just starting up today?

We all know that all of those LIBRARIES of 60,000 - 100,000 songs are full of duplicates and songs that will NEVER EVER BE REQUESTED. We know many obscure songs that are nice to have are .... just nice to have. And I understand that with mp3+g and the cost of memory today that having every song possible couldn't hurt.
( I mention mp3 because if a KJ had to lug 100,000 songs on 8,000 discs it could considered a BAD thing)

I would say that 10,000 songs is MORE than enough to run a succesful show.
It would give you a STARTER base and all the hits up to date. In the most popular genres of Standards/Oldies -Rock - Counrty - Pop ( considering any of the super urban hits as POP )

What do you think

We started one year ago with a mere 2,500 and have doubled it since but still feel we need a bit more to compete in a larger market. We had a bit of song pressure at first but made it known that we would order anything we didn't have and that worked for quite a while. Then the immediate competition started marketing their song numbers and downloading requests on the spot and we got some more pressure but on the other hand we have newer and some obscure stuff that has made some people happy.

So it is probably more WHAT you have than HOW MUCH you have but it takes a while to get the feel for what to get and as soon as you change venues or get a new influx of people it changes again.

I started with the Sweet GA Brown, Backstage, and SuperCore sets. That's about as bad as it gets (some of the SuperCore is OK). That's about 120 discs with about 1700 songs.

That served me just fine as a starter library. From there, I added more quantity by picking up sale discs and disc sets on karaoke.com that were all around $2-3 a disc AND more quality by finding good, quality discs with newer hits that people requested.

Six years later, I have over 900 discs representing about 20,000 songs (14,000 w/o dupes).

Most everyone on this board will tell you the same thing:

Start with the best BASE library you can afford, no matter how many songs that is, then contribute a percentage of your gig profits to regularly update your library with the songs people want to sing!

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C Mc
KJ, FL

BUT if you had to start today do you feel you need all those 20,000 songs ??

I agree with someone above who said it isn't how many you have but WHAT you have (right LL?). I wouldn't shoot for a number, although 6500-7000 songs should be more than adequate. It is easy to buy the most popular in those sets and have a pretty good base...but then there are artists who always seem to be in demand - start with that number, then begin building. When approaching a potential venue the number of songs you have shouldn't ever be stressed, and I think all of us should take a minute to figure out the best way to get that across in one sentence.

I have about 17,500 and buy new music every month - that is counting dupes - so probably 14,000 without dupes? Never have counted but when I redo my books in the very near future (to make new ones, spiral bound) I will have a pretty accurate count. Of course, as soon as I have the books done I'll order new music -- DOH! --

I would say a minimum of 5,000 (individual tracks, not dups) songs - carefully selected to reflect the most popular titles of music in general & the basic 'core' library that I feel any book should have.
I have just over 12K non-dup'd songs now and this is where I am from 1994 when I started. I can't base on when I started as there were only about 1500 songs total available from all manus combined - which is what I originally started with. However today is different & even though a successful show COULD theoretically be run with about 500 songs, I thing the avg singer still does look at book size as meaning something.

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

So a person today can invest maybe $4500 in music and have a kick (@$%&#!) library of maybe 5,000 well chosen titles ?

May cost a little more than that, but I believe so. Now figuring out 'exactly' what to pick - that is another topic that reflects demographic, age, general target audience, among other things. What is hot in one club may be a huge flop in the club right next door.

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

Absolutely Jam. That is, if they had a successful LIST of the 5000 most popular songs performed at many types of venues from professional kjs.

...is this what you're getting at? Maybe that list could be somewhat created here but is probably best posted in the kjs only forum.

Out of those 5000 most popular songs including every genre, everyone should be able to find something they can sing along to. THEN you'd naturally have to get requests for other songs that are venue/singer specific.

Have to totally agree with Lonnie on this one. It's the "correct" 5000 or so songs to start with that will make a bigger impact when starting out. But, it's anybody's guess which you should choose. I started with about 4500, and it wasn't the right stuff, but a good start. Now I have about 23,000 including dupes, have no idea how many individual titles tho. The availability to the downloads is a big help. So if you are at a show and have the ability to download a request, that in itself would make a huge impact on customer service.

Again, I don't think an accurate list of the most popular songs could be necessarily created here. We have compared lists before and like some of our regular songs are rarely done at other places and vice versa. True there will always be the core classics that tend to be heard in any venue - obviously these would be ones to include in a new startup company.

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

Certainly not a perfect or accurate list, but getting a good idea on what's being sung where in most parts of this country and canada can give us all a better idea of a successful songbook than NONE at all.

I think this appeals to me because i get so many singers from all over the world, but mostly karaoke people from the states and canada. I would want to have the songs Joe from Texas wants, Babs from chicago, Lonman from washington, Cue from new york, Tim from cananda, and Harryoke from florida likes.....and compile accordingly although generally so if they came to visit i could take care of them even if they didn't bring their own discs.

I have the Chartbuster Essentials set now. I purchased them over time for a little over $1000 total. That is ten sets of 30 disks, without duplicates. It is a well-balanced selection of songs, and it comes out to 4500 total.

Is it perfect? No way. But many of the songs are high quality. And at a price per title of less than 30 cents (40 cents if you bought them all new right now on Ebay) I feel it is one of the best ways to get a base library. And it has quite a few of the most common old country songs that you can't find at Tricerasoft.

If I were running multiple KJs, there is no question I would start out each with a CBE set. $1500.00 is not that much to invest to start with, and it gives them a complete offering of 4500 unique songs that cover all bases. After that, I would supplement with legal downloads to fill in holes.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

First of all, if you are planning on opening a karaoke business you need watch ebay and craigslist religiously. Great, legitimate deals on disks happen there all the time, but you have to be savy to catch them. For every new KJ wanting to get into the business, there's 4 or 5 wanting to get out selling their legit collection... frequently piecemeal.

If you start off paying $1 = 1 song you're not spending your money wisely.

Many websites still have SC foundation discs at great prices. 450 songs for $384 = .85 a song. And that's brand spankin' new. These are songs your singers will be looking for.

http://www.acekaraoke.com/sounchoicfou.html

Used disks are even better.

Now, if the bar has wi-fi, download requests on from SBI. While you will spend $2 a song, you will be getting the exact song your singer wants to sing. Over a period of months your library will slowly grow to reflect the preference of the venue.

Keep an eye out for new releases, with an eye on re-playability. Certain songs (like all summer long from kid rock), will be instantly popular with singers and listeners and remain on your request list long after they leave the charts. A good KJ will frequently be able to pick out such karaoke songs.

As a general rule, good karaoke songs are relatively easy to sing, popular for a variety of age groups, light on long instrumentals, and last about 4 minutes.

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

Start with the very basic collection: say 2500 well selected titles. BUT advertised to encourage the customers to bring their own disc/usb-pendrive.

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I can neither confirm nor deny ever having or knowing anything about nothing.... mrscott

It really depends on what kind of business you want. If you just want an occasional 1 night a week in an otherwise slow bar, in a low stress environment, then maybe only 1000 songs is the minimum. This is plenty for a location without a lot of karaoke competiion. With a standard audience you should have 95% of the requests.

There are a lot of options to get such a colection realativley cheap.

If you are in an environment with a modest level of competition then the minimum is probalby 4000-6000 to startup. This will include nearly all of the standards. This should be a resonable song set that will be competitive in most environments.

Beyond that number not counting duplicates there are two options, either specializing in a few genres of music or being a generalist.

I concentrated strongly on targeted purchases.

For my song selection after I purchased my first 3k or so startup was to look at the music "likes" of about 50 people on facebook and myspace for their favorite artists, these included most of the regulars at the bars where I did karaoke. I combined them and looked for duplicates and that gave me a list of about 250 artists that multiple people liked. I had a lot of musically inclined people and most of my target list had listed 20 or more bands they liked. I then went and found every song I could get from those 250 artists. I also keep track of what artists get sung and the top 50 artist that get sung at my show are also on the list.

The list of about 300 artist are my target music and I went out and purchased every track that I could find from those artists. Some of them were relatively easy as they had no or very few karaoke songs made. Others were a bit more difficult. The result of this approach has made me add about 3000 songs to my listing. Add in about 300 specific requests over 2 years, and finding artists from similar genres to songs that get sung has brought my non duplicated totals to about 9k. Most of the targeted purchases have been through tricerasoft or select a track.

I currently have a list of about 2600 specific songs I am looking for, of which about 90% to my knowledge have never been made for karaoke commercially. Most of the others are scatterd around the minor manus or discontinued. I keep notes and write down whenever I hear a song that I think will be good for karaoke.

While more expensive, I feel I have less dups and a better targeted music selection for my clients than a random purchase of disks.

If I had to do it all over again I would get the Sound Choice Foundations (only #1 was out when we started) and possibly as many bricks as I could afford. Then I would get the Chartbuster 100 Classic Country songs and best country of 70s,80s,90s and One Hit Wonders sets plus spcecific country artist sets like Merle, Willie, etc. Then I would fill in with some current hits. I think it would come out similarly in price to having piecemealed it and would avoid a lot of duplication. Now I sometimes want to buy a set of something and already have half the songs so it takes a lot of figuring as to how best to do it.

I bought some cheap stuff at first just to up the song numbers and find myself replacing what actually gets sung from them with better versions. But I must admit that if I didn't get the SGB set I never would have known people at our venue were interested in 90s rock as for the 6 years we had sang there they had done all country. So it was probably worth the price to test the waters but now that i know, I wish I had done it differently.