So I am working on a new project, an Internet song search for my karaoke library. I will have the program and database done in a couple weekends. I need to re-rip all my karaoke CDs and organize all my online purchases better first. But anyway, a few questions for you:
I can't make a spell-checking, partial-word-matching search engine like google. So if a customer puts in "Kid Rock Pict" it will know what to do with "Kid" and "Rock," but "Pict" it will just find no matches for in my keyword database. It will show all songs by Kid Rock instead of the specific song. This sounds reasonable right? The customer can just scroll down to the song.
If they do not spell something correctly, well, they had better just browse. I will also make it possible to browse all the songs similar to how they are in the karaoke song book, either by artist name alphabetically, or song name alphabetically. Not very hard to do this online and no papers to put into plastic sheet protectors.
Next, the main goal of this is just to do something the other KJs in my town can't. I am not trying to come up with a product I can sell. I need as many reasons as possible for people to be talking about me at other bars, and if they go to my web site to check out the song search, maybe they will find their favorite song, maybe they won't, but they wouldn't have found it in my song book either. I am competing with KJs who pirate some (or all) of their music though, so frankly, I know I don't have the best song library. I spend money on new songs every month, but I hope this project won't blow up in my face by customers going, hrm, that guy doesn't have my song and KJ-so-and-so does, so I'll go to his show instead. Man, I hate competing against pirates.
I hope this might get me some more private party bookings as well. I am trying to stop doing bar karaoke on weekends so I can focus on more private events. So hopefully the online search will get people to go to my web page, and customers who see my advertisement somewhere (I am going to get in the yellow pages soon) might go and check it out also. If they can download my whole song list from my web page (PDF file) that might also be nice for them.
Okay, sorry for the long post, if you have any suggestions or thoughts, or want to tell me I am crazy, please feel free! Thanks!
Oh, one more thing, I am going to store all the things people put into the search, so that might help me know that a customer searched for Zac Brown Toes and let me know I need to buy that song. Kinda cool?