Karaoke Forums

A fellow with 3 gigs a week and a library of 3000 is anxiously awaiting advice on how much to expand his library by and how much to spend.

When I first spoke with someone about what size library it requires to become a Kj I was told 3500. It is said that is doesn't even take 3500 if you have the "right" 1500. Lastly, the number of tracks people say they have in there libraries today typically exceed 10,000 tracks. I don't believe that most people had that many tracks a few years back.

I look at my library and wonder when some of the stuff will be sung, yet I am still buying discs as we speak

So, are we trying to compete with the 10's of thousands of tracks the pirates have and advertise?

I do think some people are dazzled by a big number, but if your crowd consistently finds the songs they are looking for when they come into your show, then that's really what's important.

A huge number of songs does you no good if there are six version of every song. Frankly, I could do without a KJ that has six versions of "Picture."

birdofsong

Library size typically only matters to those who have nothing else to stand on as far a show goes ie hosting professionalism, sound system - experience to make it actually sound good, reliability, etc.. Sure you can run a show with 1500 tracks - depending on the venue & crowds involved, however knowing which tracks to pick would be close to impossible. 3500 tracks is fine as long as people are finding things to sing. You have to figure if you run 4 hour show - 7 nights a week, and a different song was sang by every singer - every song, you won't hear more than 500 different songs in that time frame.
My library exceeded 10K about 4 years ago, about 12K now - individual song titles - sure it still grows, but only with what people ask for, no need getting stuff that may or may not get sung (except the 2 monthlie releases - pop & country - just to keep the appearance of having the 'current' stuff). If I get asked for a song that I don't have, I look into picking it up - usually on a custom disc these days. My reasoning has nothing to do with competing with the pirates numbers, it's just to make sure I have what people actually want & ask for.
And like stated, most of those 50-100 books have sometime 6 or more versions of each song - figure 100K book with say 50K of songs that are listed maybe 5 times each, dramatically cuts down their actual song count immensely. If you actually have the chance to look at one of those 100K books, you might be surprised at how many individual songs they actually have.

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I think a few years ago when the digital KJ was just becoming common place the "pirates" as you say were advertising 50,000 80,000 100,000 song libraries.
I think that nowadays THAT SIZE DOES NOT MATTER.

What MATTERS today has not changed... DECENT SOUND EQUIPMENT, A GREAT PERSONALITY and a PROFESSIONAL APPEARANCE AND ATTITUDE.....and a competetive PRICE $$$$$$

The KJ's that sit and complain about losing a job to a "pirate" usually lack one or more of those qualities

Jam, complaints arise most of the time when the pirates drag the going price down the drain which they, of course, can afford to do with an inventory of equipment and songs that cost very little. In the end, though, we know what usually happens - if the number of people attending the show drops to nothing, even though they may be paying their KJ some horrid pittance, they renege and begrudgingly pay more...But in the meantime once again karaoke becomes a joke ... and nobody bothers going anymore. Takes a lot to inspire people again. A host really has to have a good rep and an active karaoke grapevine to breathe the life into something that has been desecrated by a two-bit pirate.

I'm in pirate waters here but have never had one of them even come close to snagging one of my gigs. I do, however, work with my venues when I start up initially with a pretty clear agreement that when I have proven what I say, and that is we'll make it successful for them, the price reflects the increase in their take at the end of the night. (I don't usually bother with owners whose first question is how many songs do you have or how many followers do you have - neither really means much to me because it is the VENUE that will make a show go or not - noisy, dirty corner hole-in-the-walls with a bunch of gangbangers and potato chips for food aren't gonna make it no matter what I charge them.)

Karen you describe my venue to a T.

I too am in pirate waters in San Jose. I don't think it matters how awesome your show is when 9 in 10 are pirating.

I won't work in those places anymore, I don't need it and they're not safe. There's not enough money in this business to expose myself to that kind of risk. I'll leave those to the youngsters and pirates.

Im in a situation where I get a lot of complements on my song list for having the "right" songs even though I have only about 1/3 the total song list of a few other semi-legal KJs in the area.

The question is not do you have so many thousand songs but do you have the songs the person wants to sing. It is a question of knowing your audience.

I was out-competing Karaoke shows with 20-30k songs when I had only 6k (now up to 9k unique) on the basis of my song listings. Although I like to think that I have my other merits as a KJ as well, I have had many singers mention my song list as being a factor as to why they were at my shows.

As for pirates, yes many that go down that route are un-professional in many other ways and tend to use sub-par equipment in their sound system. Also they tend to have a sub par less than serious attitude to the job probably because they are far less committed to it financially.

My worry is that they are so widespread and act with so much impunity that more and more people are likely to become pirates, and eventually some people that act professional in other ways will slip into piracy. It is a easy slope and none of us really want to spend the thousands of dollars to get a legit songlist. Others realize that even when trying to get a legit songlist, false advertizing, fraud and misinformation make it difficult to know if you really have one even if you are trying to.

Sometimes a HUGE SONG BOOK can actually scare some singers. I mean WHO HAS TIME at a show to sit and look thru 100,000 song titles !!!!

I"ve been to shows where the "hook" was a HUGE LIBRARY only to noticed the enormous amount of duplication of titles.

The real problem with so called "pirates" is the MULTI RIGGERS who will hire a "assistant" to work for $50 a night and charge $100 for the show( profiting $50 per night) for nothing more than a small investment of PA system COMPUTER and HARDRIVE. Those companies are the real THREAT to the indy KJ

I think too much emphasis has been placed on "number of songs" but in the WRONG WAY, in my opinion.

It used to be that having a good size library was a sign of reinvesting in your business. It costs you more money and back-pain to lug those discs around. ONLY difference now is it's easier to put them on a harddrive and have no extra weight.

The FACT that pirates boast 50k or 100k songs makes a LEGIT kj with 30k songs (and original discs) weary of boasting high numbered catalogs for fear of potentially being labeled a "pirate".

Chances are if you've been kjing for many years, there's a good chance you purchased inferior songs/manus collections and have replaced many many songs with better versions.

Just because you're embarassed about your nutechs and sgb doesn't mean you can't still list them and have 20-40k songs. -That is, unless you sold them or threw them out.

SONG LIBRARY SIZE is a positive if you're a legitimate kj. Offer all of your wares and your singers will love the good AND bad versions of songs they're accustomed to learning from wherever they started singing, when they visit your show.

ADD THAT to all the other aspects of your show, personality, sound, service, and it COMPLIMENTS, NOT degrades your show, no?

4 mics are better to offer than 2 mics for large groups
A host AND co-host is better than just a host for better service
2 speakers, a sub, and a monitor is better than just 2 speakers
Multiple tvs hooked in are better than only 1 for the singer and 1 for the audience.

MORE can be BETTER in most cases. WHY NOT LARGE LIBRARY SIZE... ON-TOP-OF everything else QUALITY?

I've never seen near a 100k song library! HOW HUGE was the book? Probably the biggest i've seen is around 45k and it was in a 5 inch binder.

I'm at 23k karaoke songs including dupes and that's 12 years worth. And i'm near 90 thousand dj music songs from doing this for so many years. I own and have bought nearly every Promo Only song and ERG in every genre, all the Time Life series, NOW, several hundred music cds form the last 10 years, remixes, videos, etc.... you get the idea.

Point is...if you've been doing this professionally and as a main career for awhile, you tend to reinvest more and have more in the end.

Of course the other problem here is often the pirates have all those things, too. We always talk about pirates as having an over-inflated library and substandard skills and equipment. Although there are plenty of those out there, there are just as often pirates running good sound with entertaining hosts, that are competing for our gigs. You need all the advantages you can get, and sometimes that means understanding that bar owners can be influenced by something like a song list.

Birdofsong

I've always had a decent PA system and been gigging all my adult life. I only started karaoke just over a year ago. I actually started with around 1000 or so tracks. I got over 7000 now, but I was always getting requests for songs I didn't have until I reached at least 5000 - 6000.
I still get them every now & then. Its not really a problem now, there is plenty of other stuff for them to sing now, but I have to say once or twice I had a punter get a bit upset that I didn't have their song and a few comments that some other KJ has thoudands more.

Wow. The VocoPro 5800 is on that list. There are *huge* numbers of those in karaoke. If everyone would replace them with something better, it would be great. But I doubt it...

I started buying late enough that I have 7 wireless mics in my three setups, and none of them are affected.

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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.

Hey Micky just how did you mike post end up here?

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I like everyone when I first meet them. If you don't like me that's not my problem it's YOURS!
A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet

You've met me -- you know it's probably senility. How's things in San Antonio?

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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.

I think a savvy karaoke host could start out wiht 1000 judiciously picked songs, and then take requests from everyone who came that night, promise to have those songs for the next show, keep adding in this fashion, and you would be in business. The key would be always asking the customers what more they wanted to sing.

That's exactly what I did.

Micky says:
You've met me -- you know it's probably senility. How's things in San Antonio?

I just wished the weather would stay one temp or the other. We went from freezing to 78 degrees in two weeks time and rainy too.
Other than that it's OK.

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I like everyone when I first meet them. If you don't like me that's not my problem it's YOURS!
A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet

Precisely Drizzle -- so what do I have to order to convince you to pop up to one of my shows? .....