Karaoke Forums

What web sites do people here use to buy regular music?

I play a TON of music during my shows between singers, what I do is cross-fade from the karaoke singer, to a song, to the next karaoke singer. I do it because it always takes some amount of time for the next singer to walk up, sometimes a couple minutes if they are waiting for a beer or collecting their friends for a group song. This eliminates all the "dead air" that is typical of karaoke shows in my town, and it makes my show a lot better. Some other KJs have started copying my format, I am sure I am not the first one to think of this, but when I was the only one doing it in my area, everyone talked about it, and customers made positive remarks about it almost every night.

Anyway, I buy a lot of new music to keep it fresh and different. I probably spend about $50 on amazon.com MP3s in an average month. It seems like they are selling a lot of MP3s for $1.29 instead of $0.99 now. I wonder if I should use something else?

When iTunes was the only game in town, I bought almost all my music from the iTunes store, but after you spend time converting 1900 songs from their DRM format to CDs and then back to MP3s so you can play it in different programs than iTunes, you never want to do that again. As soon as amazon.com MP3 came out I started buying everything from them instead, and I only use iTunes now for things that I cannot find on amazon.com.

Other sites I know about and sometimes buy from are lala.com (cool for finding new music, I like the interface) and masterbeat.com, which specializes in remixes, lots of techno, I get requests for techno sometimes and I always like to satisfy a difficult request because $1 or $2 spent on buying a song may get you a regular patron who will come in and drink at your gig many more times, plus when they see me buy a song they often tip me.

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

I've used WALMART downloads and more recently LALA dot com ( $.89)

I use Promo Only. For $15 a month, you get 15-18 hit songs as soon as they're released to radio. There are various music "formats" you can get; the one I subscribe to is Mainstream Radio.

There is also Prime Cuts which offers a similar service, except you get all formats and a disc weekly. It's about $50 a month.

For the occasional song that's not on my monthly service, I'll download it from iTunes. I use my iPod for fill music. I think it's a great idea to have a second source so you don't have to wait for the karaoke track to be over in those cases where there's a long outro. Most karaoke software won't kick in the fill music until the karaoke audio is over, and then it fades up the fill music. As I try to keep the energy up, I can start the fill track at full volume and dump out of the karaoke track when I want to. Also, I enjoy having a second audio source in case the computer crashes.

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[font=Lucida Console]DangerousKaraoke.com[/font]
[font=Lucida Console]"Sing for the day, sing for the moment, sing for the time of your life!"[/font]

I buy Prime cuts and a few other compiliations, otherwise if I need a specific song I'll go to Amazon.com and buy the 256K MP3's for .89 or whatever it is.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

I know this is a hornet's nest but is using the Amazon/ITunes et al downloads OK in a commercial show? Supposedly it is in the user agreement that you can't. We use music in the same way Jeff describes and I have wondered about legal sources for buying it.

I used a subscription to Xmix. Aside from that I get my music by buying the cd's from stores.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

I use the "NOW THATS WHAT I CALL MUSIC" cds

Me too. Just bought disc 33.

Amazon is my main source (both.com and .co.uk through a VPN to get UK only releases) MastermixDigital.com for some nice pre-mixed stuff, mashups, extended mixes and so on.

Re - hornets nest. I know it's in the user agreement but I think it's just to make sure the venues pay the BMI ASCAP SESAC et al. (I could be wrong)

I get the UK NOW series (up to NOW 75 now) too.

Last week I had fun using TV Themes as filler, next will be some movie themes. It's fun when people know it but can't place it. I even gave out a few prizes for correct guesses last night!

- Jonn

Still buy discs & load them to my dj computer. Often just hit the used cd stores or pawn shops for filler/dj music.

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

Lon, your new picture has you lookin' to serious

That was part of a promo shot for my old band.

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

I pick up a lot of "best ofs" at the thrift stores and pawn shops. I also buy singles from Rhapsody. I load everything on a main computer then split it off onto thumb drives - I carry one computer that plays my windows media files, use a hub, plug in any of the 5-6 thumb drives that I have music on. I try and separate the music onto these drives so I know which one to use in which venue. I am pretty visual so I like to see what's coming up next, can change it up if I want....everything in one spot. I have bought the "Now That's Music" albums but not in a while. So, to answer, multiple sources... whatever it takes to get what I need.

I do a lot of private stuff, weddings, etc., so I build my collection based on what's coming. Have one in June that's predominantly country so I will be talking with them, getting their requests, going through what I have, what I need, listening to country stations for a while (not my favorite), consulting play lists on the top 40 country stations, etc., then start building my set lists. That music will go on a thumb drive for future "country venues" and I add to those as I find I need to.

I have some friends who subscribe to Promo Only. They like them for the "radio edits" of explicit songs. I find it is getting much easier to buy "clean" edits of popular songs online though, and entire albums, no doubt because of Wal-Mart. I'm not a fan of the way they repeat some songs on multiple issues of the same "format" and basically a lot of the songs are not useful to me, so I never thought it was worth the money.


I don't know, content licensing is so hard to understand anymore, but I figure the RIAA lawyers have a lot better things to do than prosecute me for buying music from amazon.com or iTunes instead of buying CDs. There are so many pirate DJs out there who do not pay for any music at all (and this is why rates for DJs, just like KJs, have gone down tremendously) that I am sure RIAA would not want the publicity of suing me for buying music the wrong way, when they could easily spend the same amount of time and money suing some DJ outfit that has 12 guys doing weddings every weekend all summer without even buying 1 song let alone 12 copies of every song.


I kinda do something similar, except I use iTunes to organize all my music (although I often do the actual playback from WinAmp, you can drag a song from iTunes to WinAmp and it plays as long as it is not a DRM song.)

So my iTunes has folders for the songs I most commonly use in different genres, and I have folders like "wedding," "beach," etc. too for stuff I just organize in my own way. I also make a new playlist for every event I do and I save them, so if I am stuck thinking about what kind of song I would like to play next, I just think of a similar event I have done in the past, and scroll through the playlist I saved from that event to recycle some inspiration.

That is much easier (for me at least) than a bunch of USB thumb drives.

I do use a USB audio interface to give me an extra output from my laptop, so I have two faders on my mixer, one for karaoke backing tracks, and one for filler music. There are a number of threads about this in the Technical Forum on this site, it is really easy to setup.

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

I have various "megamixes" ...these last typically anywhere between 15 minutes and 70 minutes...that way when you fade back,the music is still going. They are all available legally online

I make the analogy that charging a DJ or Karaoke host more for the same songs than non-professionals would be the same as a tool manufacturer charging shade tree mechanics less for their tools than professional mechanics. What gives with that anyway?

What's filler music?

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You can be strange but not a stranger

That's the song you play in-between Picture and Before He Cheats.

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

I DJ as much as I host Karaoke.

I get Promo Only: Mainstream Radio, Urban Radio, Modern Rock Radio, Country Radio, Urban Club.

I also get Promo Only Hott Video

X-Mix Urban, Funkymix, Ultimix, and Full Tilt Remix


My Music, Video and Karaoke is about $200 a month. Or about $8.50 every time I work.

Up until a few years ago i got every genre of Promo Only since '96 and have nearly every disc they've ever produced.

Now it's Itunes and the ocassional Now That's What I Call Music discs.