Karaoke Forums

I'm seriously thinking about getting back into karaoke but I have the following problems.

No stage monitors (speakers).
Music library is way out of date.
Books are gone.

Suggestions? Anything else you can think of?

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Okay, who took my pants?

music isn't really a problem. Most people sing stuff that has been available forever. Get any 'new' songs via dowloads like karaokeversion.

you could always do online books as well

-James

Read through many posts in this forum. Plenty of very affordable ideas and sources available to you. Cheers! And welcome back to karaoke.

My first question is how long have you been retired? The reason I'm asking this question is I have been retired a little over 2 years now and things have changed greatly in that short span of time. You have to ask yourself what is going to be your target market, and also check out if your local area is already over saturated with KJ's ? Before you start wanting to put the band together again and investing time and money into the project, you need to determine if it will be worth the effort. Without doing a little research it would be like putting "The Cart Before The Horse". As far as getting set up again it will take some time to bring that about unless you keep your equipment up to playing standards. Sometimes you can get deals on used equipment since hosts seem to go in and out of business almost continually.

If I recall you had a pretty substantial library when you retired a while back. Just get to know the online download sources and buy as requested if you don't have a song, and if it isn't available there, ebay and amazon are great sources. Learn the UK sites for each as well (your login info is the same for those sites) and order discs that may be available that aren't immediately downloadable.

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I effectively stopped about... has it been that long? Well, yeah about ten years since I had a steady bar gig. Most of my discs walked off one night during tear down while I was otherwise distracted. Nothing even came of the distraction. I wonder if she was party to the disappearance? Anyway, I just got mostly garbage disks left, SGB and the like. The first brick of CB that I got cheap. That's my situation.

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Okay, who took my pants?

Sorry, duplicate post.

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Okay, who took my pants?

As many have said, I found single song downloads to be highly effective.

I had a similar situation to start. The system I bought had about 1800 songs in it. I tripled the selection by buying less-than-perfect disc off of eBay like sgb and KJ tools ect simply to get the book size.

I then went about replacing songs track by track and buying new music by request. The response was awesome as the customers felt like they really had a say in my show.

You can find CAVS collections on ebay, Zoom has great packages and Singer Solution just to get the book size on the new stuff. You can replace from there.

My main source was tricerasoft, but they may be out. Karaoke Version, BKD, karaoke.net... I hear sunfly has a US site now. All great sources

Of course another option is a GEM set... but I have trouble justifying the steep price for a collection where likely 20% of it will get sung.

Zoom do a "Mega Pack" of 500 tracks on 26 discs for about $100. A good mix of old and newer tracks if you want to start to re-build a collection.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/401211582558

I use the Gem set at my shows but i wanted to mention that Mr. Entertainer tracks get used quite a bit. You can purchase the entire library of them for £699 (3500 songs) equivalent to approx .25 cents a track.

Wow ten years that is a long time in between gigs! This business about discs walking away is one reason I went to a hard drive player system. It was a lot of work but every disc was on the player and I didn't have to worry about any being taken. The best part is my original discs for the most part are still good, as the day I bought them. Funny my hard drive player is over 12 years old and it is still working, go figure. One thing is for sure if you are pulling down you have to stay focused, especially in some neighborhoods. It's rough to have to start all over again building a good library, especially since supply is limited at least in the good old USA. I still think if you are considering going back in business you need to really research your area, and attend a few shows to see how things are being done today. I was a mobile DJ/KJ for most of my hosting career and played a different venue nightly on a rotation basis. I hope you can make your dream come true, good luck.

P.S. I should put down that prior to the hard drive player, I backed up all of my discs on blank CDG's and kept the originals safely locked up, just in case I was ever checked. Of course in 19 years of performing nobody ever checked up on me.

Yea but, umm.... backing them up is illegal as hell. I was computer based but I always brought the discs just to prove I owned them. Deleting the stolen songs was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make.

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Okay, who took my pants?

Backing them up is not illegal as long as you have the originals I been over this point with Jim. It would be the same principle as if they were on a PC 1:1 ratio. As long as you have the originals to show you have no problem, but then again I never had to show anybody anything, at least here in California. If you ever were hauled into court you could just show your originals, of course if the originals were stolen then that would be a problem. The original purpose of the discs changed from being a tool of the business, to providing proof that you had bought your cdg's, currently that is the chief reason for having them during the discovery period before going to trial. That is of course if the matter ever got to trial?

well you might not be able to justify the expense, but you could get a GEM set. Or you could try finding a digital chartbuster 12,000 song drive.

zoom made a really decent set of base discs if you can track them down.

I contacted Karaoke-Version once regarding a bulk buy. They were open to the idea and were willing to offer discounts for volume purchases. That was then and this is now but it could be worth reaching out to them if you like their stuff. Won't cost anything to try.