Karaoke Forums

With so many changes occurring in the karaoke industry, I thought it might be time to avail ourselves to questions as I know there are many. Also, in my view karaoke seems to have stagnated and hasn't progressed from where it was when we began back in 1993 (although we didn't incorporate until 1995). I have a number of ideas that I think could add new dimensions to the karaoke show and hope that some of you will be willing to entertain these ideas and contribute positive input. Constructive criticism is always welcome of course.

I hope that the exchanges will be respectful and courteous although I realize that is a formidable task in such forums, but I look forward to contributing in any way I can.

Tom Viveiros - President & CEO
Stellar Records, Inc.

Tom -

Welcome to the Karaoke Scene Forums.

We hope that you can share some insight and information from your perspective to the multitude of questions and comments regarding recent changes.

Thank you and if you have any questions please feel free to contact me or one of the moderators.

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Thank you for joining us here.
I'm looking forward to your input.
My first question concerns your chosen screen name --
Is that a tribute to Frédéric Bastiat?

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KNOW THYSELF

[quote="earthling12357"]Thank you for joining us here.
I'm looking forward to your input.
My first question concerns your chosen screen name --
Is that a tribute to Frédéric Bastiat?[/quote]

earthling12357 indeed it is a tribute to Frederic Bastiat. To have read and understand the writings of Bastiat is to understand the perspective by which I view things. Which probably means that it puts me at odds with over 90% of the population so I'm used to being on the battering end of most discussions. I strive very hard to keep things from taking on an emotional tone and be respectful of those with whom I disagree. After all, irrespective as to how strongly I feel about any subject, there is always the possibility that I am wrong, and as long as we all can recognize that possibility difference of opinion can be kept as just that, differences of opinion.

Good Day Tom!

Welcome to the forums. Very happy to see you engage with us here and looking forward to hearing your ideas.

-Chris

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-Chris

...Good to see Stellar here, Tom. Looking forward to you input at KS. Am sure you will find much to post about in this place.

...Last year I was looking to fill some holes in my PHM Collection and Tony was there to help. I appreciate the great customer service. Thanks!

Hi Tom... Welcome to KS.

Although I never met you in person, you have dealt with me years ago. You helped me to obtain (what was) the last good copy (at that time) of a PHM disc with Alanis Morrisette's "Thank You" on it. I have also spoken with and met Tony (and his Wife) at one of the old JOLT Summits (back in 2002 in RI).

I do have a question for you (which I had also asked Tony about 6 months ago). Will you be releasing more "Mainstream" current hits on the Country discs (I can't speak about the Pop Hits, since I really don't listen to today's current Pop Hits music much). I just know that most of the Country songs you have released have been (for the most part) "Fluff" since about November of 2011... nothing that we hear on the radio today. I would suggest listening to Xirius XM, Channel 59 to get an idea of what I am talking about.

Hi Tom, welcome.
glad to see you here, we will try to take it easy on you

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

Hi Cueball,

Yes indeed I remember you and your real name, and thank you for your delicate way of calling our recent selections "Fluff". To be honest, the selections are not very good at all, and calling them "Fluff" is almost a compliment.

You may recall the time when selections were our calling card and we were putting out the hits before they were even getting airplay. Many of our customers hadn't even heard of half of the songs that were on our disc but knew that they would before long. We still have the ability to pick songs with that accuracy but a couple of things have happened along the way. The first is that many of the artists were upset that we were releasing the tracks before they did which is understandable, and secondly the licensing landscape has dramatically changed.

Without getting into a long drawn-out explanation, suffice it to say that we still have the capability of choosing the hits, it's just that we don't have the ability to license them. The only company that I'm aware of that is legally legally licensing some of the more popular hits for release in the USA is Audiostream. There is a lot of content coming in from overseas i.e. Karaoke Version, SunFly, Zoom, SBI, Tricerasoft, etc. but I can't confirm nor deny that they are getting the proper licenses to sell their tracks here in the USA.

We have been working on this problem diligently for several months now and do hope to have a resolution in the very near future.

Thanks everyone for the well wishes. I hope to be able to live up to your expectations, but if not please take it easy on me. I'm officially a "virgin" (of sorts) on this forum so please be gentle.

Hello, sir...and Welcome!

I have been informed that PHM will not be participating in Karaoke Cloud Pro at this time. Is there any light you can shed on this decision? I understand if there are possible internal issues that caused this conclusion, but are there any reasonings that are general or specific in nature that may be of interest to those in this forum?

Hi, and welcome. My question is what is you OFFICIAL position on shifting you discs. I was told, via e-mail, you were fine with it, as long as we kept the original disc, which I am fine with. I only have two of your discs. Both from 2004. Can we shift them? Is there any audit crap that we have to go through, and will you be suing those that have shifted your material? Yes, I AM unapologetically blunt, but I am friendly. Thanks for your answers.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

Such honesty is something that we aren't used to, coming from a karaoke company. Thank you. I (and many of us on here) almost (or do) feel betrayed by other manufacturers. We've been lied to, given the run around, and been flat out fed BS for SO long now. Thank you.

I have bought very few disks from you. The reason why: as stated above, I usually don't recognize the songs. Sure, many WILL be hits, but I have always found that my money is better spent on what people are wanting to sing now versus what they may or may not want to sing in the future. I think that, when it comes to releasing music, you are known for being too soon, Chartbuster was known for a long time for being right on time, and Sound Choice (way back when) was known for being too late. In my opinion, that was a major factor in why they're basically out of business. They clung to "Sales are down!!! It MUST be piracy!" way too long. While this was certainly true, they tended to ignore the fact that many karaoke hosts were no longer buying "old music" - many hosts already had all of the old music they needed. Sure, some of it may have been pirated, but that meant that new music was the new way to make money in the karaoke business. The faster hit music got to market, the better. But, they were always 3-6 months behind PHM and CB. And once again, everyone already had the music the put out.

Enough about them - more about you.

You seem to do very little to push your music. You have been in business long enough where you could make "Artist Disks", or "Best of 20XX", but you don't do it. I find that odd in the current financial environment for karaoke manufacturers. I don't buy much Urban/Rap type of music. But, if I found a good 10-15 song compilation disk for, say, an entire year, I'd probably buy it.

Next: It seems as if foreign manufacturers are the only ones with the proper license to sell downloads. I'll skip the whole ASCAP/BMI thing - but couldn't you "sell" or "rent" your musical renditions to an overseas company, and have them simply make the CDG and then sell it back to the U.S.? You are missing out on a lot of business without downloads - I wish you could find a way to make it happen.

Finally, this is totally random - you should sell PHM attire on your website. I'd buy it.

That's all. (Apparently, I should have drank tonight. I'd be sleeping by now.)

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I'm not a cheerleader, but I paid for my pom poms with my own money!

Unfortunately, we are unable to participate at present. I'm unable to comment any further at this time except to say that the door has been kept open and hopefully we can revisit this project in the near future. I apologize that I can't be more specific but at this point in time circumstances won't allow otherwise. BTW please call me Tom or by my screen name.

We can't give you "permission" to shift or otherwise copy content for which we do not own or control the rights to, namely the musical composition which of course is embedded in the sound recording (derivative work). Those rights are controlled by the song writer/music publisher, and therefore any permission to "shift" or otherwise copy the karaoke sound recording containing the musical composition must be obtained from the publisher either prior to obtaining permission from the producer or as a stipulation in a written agreement from the producer of the sound recording.

With that being said, we do not now nor have we ever had any interest in discouraging the shifting of our legally purchased content to any type of medium be it mass storage devices (i.e. hard disks), SD cards, thumb drives, etc. providing it does not compromise the quality of the product.

With respect to audits . . . we do not conduct audits, nor do we offer a "certification" program. I believe we may have done that once or twice as an accommodation due to a misinterpretation of our policy, but that has since been clarified and has not reoccurred.

We only sue infringers of our intellectual property and only after we obtain solid evidence that an intentional infringement has occurred. We have no interest in suing our own customers. However, I should note that we do have irrefutable evidence that even some of our own customers have infringed on our intellectual property. How we deal with that largely depends on the severity of the infringement and how best to allocate our resources in the bigger picture with regard to infringements all together.

We now all live in an era where social media is a dominant force and has influenced the way that companies interact with their customers. It is just as self-serving to be honest with our customers as it is in providing our customers with good customer service. It really is astounding when you think about it how companies have allowed negative reviews of their products to the point where one would be hard pressed to find a reason to purchase. In the end it would be difficult to argue that both the sellers and customers aren't better off as a result.

As far as not "pushing" our music, you are somewhat correct, but while we don't offer very many artist compilations, we do offer various other packages. Our main focus right now is with regard to licensing issues. Our mantra has always been that the three most important things in karaoke are titles, titles and titles. Unfortunately we've not been offering the best titles and that is now priority number one in getting back on track.

As far as downloads, this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone of course. I think every karaoke producer has been aware that this is the future or at the very least a very big part of the future of any sales model. I can tell you that we have personally been planning on this for the last five years. There are a lot of parts to this and some extreme licensing challenges for sure.

Now as far as "selling" or "renting" our catalog to an "overseas" company, we have tried to do so in the past, but unfortunately the resellers would not guarantee us that they would block all USA IP addresses from their servers. As you are aware there are several European companies selling their products here in the USA. In most if not all cases, an MCPS license is not valid for sale into the USA. These European companies must acquire a separate license similar to the ones that we get in order to distribute their products here. Thus far at least through our own experiences, there has been no advantage to date in offering our catalog to an "overseas" reseller.

At one time we did sell some "swag" on our website but it really wasn't all that successful. That was years ago however, and this may be something we should revisit once we get back on track with offering better titles.

I'd like to comment on the actual quality of the graphics on your product as of late. I think it would be much better if you could try to use a bigger font on your tracks and it would be much easier on the singers if you would go back to dosplaying the lyrics in the line by line style instead of the whole page at once. One last suggestion that I would like to make is that your tracks would use colors with more of a contrast. When I come across a track of yours that I really want to sing; I usually wind up changing the background color to black and change the word colors to white that change to red. It is much easier on the eyes than white turning to yellow. Not all of us have the same quality vision as we did when we were younger.

Agree with the font size & line by line vs whole page for some of the faster songs especially. The older PHM swipes were better IMO prior to 'Sing It Now" powered by PHM.
Now do you/did you own the Pop Hits Today/COuntry Hits Today. The years coincided with PHM seemingly dropping off the market & the next month Pop Hits Today came on, then when PHT dropped out, PHM came back in to fill out the next month. I seem to remember something on the defunct JOLT forum about this around 97/98 or somewhere around that time with one of the brands (maybe Top Hits Monthly) copying trademark/logos?

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Thank you very much for that very clear and concise answer. I will be adding you to my list of suppliers, then. I definitely like a company that is willing to work WITH their customers instead of against them.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

Tom,
I am liking the way you think.
So far you are living up to your screen name quite well.
Hopefully I won't challenge that too greatly with my next question.
My question concerns your CAP program.
I have no personal need for the CAP but I am curious.
When you receive payment for "certification", are those funds somehow distributed to the various IP rights holders? I'm having trouble figuring out how that would work out since there is no product changing hands, and you can't give "permission" to shift or otherwise copy content for which you do not own or control the rights. I suspect your licensing on much of the older work has expired, so unless you still have a warehouse full of complete libraries and destroy one with each CAP purchase, it seems like a fee to look the other way, which I find troublesome. Please help me understand the logic behind the program and where the money goes.

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