Karaoke Forums

and when all is said and done......the pirates are kicking A$$ and taking names....and the cry babies....I mean Cheer Leaders can't seem to do a damned thing about it.except cry the blues. I've got an idea for a song. "The it ain't fair Blues"

da da da da... I bought all my songs
da da da da... The pirates stole all of theirs
da da da da... I can't get no gigs
da da da da... and nobody cares

da da da da... It just ain't fair
da da da da... I can't make no money
da da da da... I thought SC would help
da da da da... they just said, sorry honey.


You gotta love that blues riff.

I am sure that goes to something complicated like....."Row, Row, Row Your Boat", too.....

Too bad it is a fictional representation. I bought all my songs and I have more work than I can take on. It isn't about fairness to me. It's about paying your dues....literally. I have never counted on SC or anyone to help, though some of what they have done and offered has helped.

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-Chris

Possibly helped in a few high profile areas Chris, that have been repeatedly targeted. By and large huge sections of the country have not been effected at all by the legal process express. At the end of what 5 years of effort about 1,000 cases have been resolved or settled. During that time 5,000 new hosts have been added to the ranks 90% to 95% which are illegal by the manus own estimate. That is not progress it is really pathetic. At that rate the problem will never be solved.

Chris is wearing his Sound Choice rose colored glasses, as usual. They want to believe that they are making an incredible impact all over the country on the Karaoke Piracy Scourge. For every one pirate they "persuade" into buying some GEM discs, there are 5 or 10 more people buying hard drives loaded with pirated material and getting into the karaoke business. Since Chris has been successful in his area, he thinks that it works like that for every KJ out there. His dream is to automate his systems so he won't have to deal with real people in the real world. Typical wizard of OZ wannabe. No one is paying attention to the man behind the curtain.

Chris is more than capable of defending himself, but I will point out that he is hardly an unqualified SC cheerleader. He has his issues with what we do; the difference is that he takes them up with us instead of harping on them continuously in a public forum.



I am pretty sure my goal has been, first and foremost, to keep my client in business by assisting it in recovering the property that's been stolen from it. I have never made any secret of that. It happens that the best way to do that is to convert or kill (figuratively) the pirates, and our legitimate customers benefit when we benefit. There is plenty of business to go around to the legitimate operators even if we manage to convert a lot of pirates. It is doubtful we'll be able to eliminate piracy, but we can knock it down to a more manageable level, which benefits everyone who matters.

SC is a small company in the grand scheme of things but they are doing what they can to protect themselves. In order to blanket the country they would need the budget of a large law enforcement agency or a large multi-national company like Sony. To expect them to be like that is foolishness. But to belittle a company for doing what they are doing is just plain wrong. I hope you never get into a situation where people are robbing you blind.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

and you've been able to knock it down from 90% to 95%. Mission Accomplished!

When have I ever said I want to automate my systems and not deal with real people in the real world? Do you really have nothing better to do than just make stuff up?

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-Chris

I think BFFL is mistakingly referring to this (which was Toqer, not you): viewtopic.php?f=26&t=28821

I don't doubt your goal first and foremost is to keep your client in business by assisting in the recovery of property business. After all the more that is recovered the more you make right James, you are working on a contingency basis right? I hope you have more than one client since all you have been recovering is the fair retail value of the product in question. Is it really theft? No criminal penalties have been attached to any of these cases they are all civil matters. Disputes between two business's basically and damages being awarded. Come James you really don't want to kill any pirates, you want to convert them since this is your future customer base. That is if and when you ever get back to doing what you should be doing producing some kind of product for sale and distribution. You are right there is plenty of business to go around, the problem is like in real estate where 10% of the agents sell 90% of the properties, there just aren't that many good KJ's. One's that have all of the multiple skills necessary to build and maintain an effective and profitable karaoke service business. That is why so many hosts come in and go out of the business on a regular basis. You are not even knocking piracy to a more manageable level, the net result of your actions is an increase in number of illegal hosts not a decrease. That's the truth it's just some people can't handle the truth.

While I may find SC's methodology unethical, there are some signs in regard to actual Piracy ( stealing music, not media shifting) that are hard to ignore no matter who you are.

Those of us who have been in business a long time ( by that I mean a few decades) can certainly accumulate some very impressive track quantities in our libraries ( though I'm kind of a lightweight, owning may 25-28,000 and carrying maybe 15K to non-private events). 100K+ tracks after that amount of time is certainly viable.

When I see a KJ who's been in business a year or less with 38- 150K, and one show paying $150 ( and puts this info online), I figure this person is either the stupidest human investor on the planet or is stealing tracks. If they weren't, they will be a long time at it before they realize a profit, if you see my point.

When I see a KJ running PC with a large track quantity who has no idea what version of a song they have and can't pull it up on the PC - after seeing that it's not in the book - I kinda think he bought a pre-loaded hard drive.

When I see a KJ that has nothing but the least expensive equipment ( Rat Shack wired mics, Technical Pro speakers, bottom of the barrel amp, and no-name lappy) carrying even 20K of nothing but the TOP NAME, most expensive tracks, I'm thinking track thief.

Call me picky.

By the way, if I were a pro investigator, THESE SIGNS would be what I was looking for - not merely the use of a PC.

That being said, I wish there were laws against Crappy-Oke. In my area, this does more damage than piracy. The Crappy-okeist ( yeah, my word) works a venue and fails quickly. OK. Then a good host tries to get into said venue and hears "We tried karaoke, and it sucks." Makes for a much tougher sell......

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"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

But on that same note (at least around here) there are more 'crappieoke' companies using pirated material than there are legit companies that are giving ALL kj's a bad name/rap. Not saying a legit company can't run a crappy show, but the numbers are a lot fewer than those that actually took pride & paid for the music and quality equipment.

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

And what do you see if that KJ has a well-rounded mix of different brands within that 20K tracks, but still uses the equipment you describe?

I have seen many Pirate KJs who have operated with BETTER sound systems and equipment than some Legit KJs. Likewise with how they ran their shows. I've said it once, I'll say it again, "Crapioke" does NOT EQUAL Track Thief. The two terms are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE.

All of the things you listed are things that we look for, and have since the beginning of this project.

The investigative process we designed aims to gather data points in all of the areas you mentioned and many more. Number of tracks, years (or weeks) in business, equipment type and quality, KJ's demeanor and familiarity with the system he operates, multiple versions of songs...all of these things are part of the investigations we do, and these indicia of infringement--track theft, to use your term--are provided to allow the attorney to make an informed judgment call about whether to sue.

"Walk in, see the logo, see a PC, walk out" is NOT, and never has been, a sufficient investigation. Such an investigation would never by itself result in a lawsuit. In fact, if that's what the report came back with, the investigator wouldn't even be paid.

I cannot believe that you thought that's what our investigations consist of.

Even APS, which is much maligned for other reasons, produced reports that I have seen that covered this material. In every case? I couldn't say; I haven't seen all of the reports. But I've seen enough of a random sample to know that the established procedures were sound.

Good question, Cue. The answer would be that I would be less suspicious. My point was that if a host couldn't afford or didn't want to invest in even mediocre equipment, how or why would he be able to pay big bucks for the most expensive brands?

One would normally expect such a host to have a few top lables, more medium labels, a maybe a bunch of cheap home sets. Would just make more sense.

That was my point. I agree with you completely regarding crappy-oke. A bad KJ is a bad KJ whether they buy their tracks or steal them.

Hosting skills are host -dependant, not track -dependant.

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"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

I could just as easily fallen into that category when I first decided to throw my hat into the ring and buy the equipment needed to KJ.

Originally, I was already building up my library as a Karaoke Hobbyist. For 4 years, I was always buying new discs every other week. At first, it was specific music geared towards my wants and desires. Then I started adding music geared towards the tastes of my fellow Karaoke friends. After I finished fulfilling their wishes, I had already become obsessed with obtaining more CDGs, and I just started buying new releases as they came out. In the course of those 4 years (1996-2000), I had become Brand Knowledgeable, so I had a pretty good collection of music within my personal library. I had already accumulated over 400 CDGs, and I already had better selections than more than half of the local KJs in my area.

When I had decided to take out a loan from my 401K plan to purchase a new car in 2000, I had also decided to take out a larger amount of a loan so that I could cover the cost of the equipment I would need. Since I was not very knowledgeable in Stereo equipment or PA and Amp systems, I consulted with a friend of mine (who was a drummer in a local band). He steered me in the direction of some good equipment to buy. I could just as easily decided to take out just enough for the car, and then I would have been forced to go as cheap as possible with the purchase of my karaoke gear. I'm glad that I chose not to do that, but I'm just saying, it could have gone that way. and that would be an answer to your "How could that be so?".

"Nice Try", but I had my best year ever in 2013, and legal! It all comes down to whether or not you want to be a real business that participates in the legit business community (like adults do), or be a shady, under the table hack dealing in cash only and lieing about the income (always a distinct level of immaturity).

Around here, the thieves who steal music usually have the crappiest equipment. Being raised to steal also teaches you to buy the cheapest wal-mart/voco-pro crap gear you can find. I have found that a KJ who wont spend money on music (the MOST important part of your show) doesnt spend money on quality gear either. Unless of course he can steal that too! They aren't running a business. They have no vision or plan. They don't advertise, in fact they invest as little as possible. It's just about making some short term money to blow.

Bazza you really have to watch those hasty generalizations, that you are so fond of. It can lead to fallacies of logic.

No Bazza hit IR on the head. Where I am, not too far from Bazza, it's almost impossible to get what a legal kj is worth because the bar owners think they can get a show for $50.

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

Once the equipment and music is paid for Danny what is to stop a host from charging whatever they want to? It's all profit after that, if a host is just supplementing his income or retired and doesn't need the money to support his or her life style, they could charge 50.00 if they wanted to. They could charge 250.00 if they wanted to.