Karaoke Forums

@ Smooth: Karaoke didn't roll over and die when SC stopped making tracks . Kids who were 15 years old are now of drinking age. They formed THEIR life's playlist in an age of post SC production: Ed Sheeran, Imagine Dragons, Chainsmokers, etc..

As for how many song it's take for a successful night: Cat's Meow in New Orleans runs a show with maybe a few hundred songs. It's the exception rather then the rule though as it's a true tourist bar. The "Playlist" (You can't call it a songbook) is heavily edited to keep the bar upbeat and singing along, no "Wind Beneath My Wings" to be found!

8,000 songs are plenty if you know your music and your audience. As I've been around (for what feels like) forever, my personal rig is a larger size. My other rigs are in the 10,000 range, but have a better play ratio. I don't need to spend money on every Frank Sinatra and Elvis song anymore, because 95% of the time, 10 song from each of them is all I *really* need.

Finally, lets not forget about the host! You can have the original recordings, if you can't EQ your gear or you have crappy equipment, it will still sound terrible! True KJ host skill is making a crappy recording (And the singer) sound good!

I had a previous discussion about this with my KJ. I don't think they should stop.

SoundChoice (Pep) went through many obstacles to keep karaoke alive

As my KJ says "SoundChoice sold their soul so we can rock n' roll"

If ever they do release new songs, I will be there buying their tracks.

I also agree with other members for what they say. You don't need a million songs to put on a great show. I only have just under 15,000 tracks between Chartbuster, SoundChoice, DK and Sunfly. I know it's not much but My kj's make it work and put on a great interactive show.

1) they stopped 8 years ago. last production was a best of 2009 disc.
2) they tried to keep PEP alive, not karaoke. even admitted as much.
3) selling their soul was what got them in trouble to begin with.

if they begin production again (which they won't) and gave what hosts need i think most of us would buy.
1) the right songs
2) on time, not 3 months late after every other maker has it available
3) in the format we need (mp3G)
4) a-la-carte purchases
5) a reasonable price ($3.00 or less)
6) quality to compete with current manufacturers (not the garbage they put out the last few years)
7) no extra requirements (monthly pass for access, or any other fees)

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

I just heard that Pep doesn't send out disks for the Gem. Instead they send out a USB drive to new Gem subscribers. I think whoever thought of that is a really bad idea.

I think this part is awesome

source: https://pep.rocks/faq.php#faq_gem

but the sending out a USB drive is a terrible idea.

There are many ways to offer music files encoded into a hardware device to prevent theft.

As my KJ friend said to me, It's just a matter of time where you will see these USB drives sold on ebay or on the forum classified ads or even pirate file share sites.

Why not just setup a Download section in the members account. It's so easy to monitor the inventory and keep track of what songs get downloaded from what members downloaded and also easy to manage the database online. 6000 tracks do not take up much space on a server.

I believe Pep has so much to offer on such a professional level It just hasn't kicked in yet.

Bryan? Bryan ?? Hello ... Bryan are you there??

So, you pay a ton of money for a USB drive, and the disks stay with them. So, what happens if there is a fire at the "warehouse" and all those disks go up in smoke?? It also seems that you have to run the songs USING the USB drive. USB drives fail, all the time. They are just screwing people, now. It's worse than ever. They want total control over the music that gets used. They just need to close down and go away, once and for all!!

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

can't say they aren't....
but they could not be 1:1 at that point....
one last set of discs, unlimited flash drives...
but...you know...if WE keep discs off site we are pirates.

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

THEY are allowed to be 2:1. They own it all. . Hypocrites. They are now pirating their own music, according to their own policies. How do WE know there is a set of discs for every GEM licencee?? They can tell us about individual numbers all they want. I think they have run out of GEM sets, and want to make more money on the set. What better way.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

Nothing from Jim. Go figure.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

Seems to me like it's a non-issue. Of course I might be speaking out of turn here because I don't understand the concept behind the disc storage thing but I would think that if you purchased a USB drive that it would be easy enough to make legal copies to another USB drive or some other media or even discs for that matter, unless of course the USB drives are encrypted with copy protection, which in my opinion is a bad idea to begin with. Nevertheless if such is the case, that presents a whole different set of issues, but judging from KNF's post the drives do not seem to be encrypted. I wouldn't worry about warehouse fires either. There were thousands of these copies sold and it wouldn't take very much effort at all to repress or burn new copies. If God forbid they should ever have a warehouse fire then you can pretty much bet their problems are much bigger than the storage of their customer's discs.

I don't believe they have anymore sets of GEMS. I think they are making copies from one set of masters, to USB drives, and just handing out serial numbers. But they would never admit it, if that were the case, so how are we to know??

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

on the same token, they could be as they say they are.
just decided a more efficient way to ship and transfer all the songs.

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

That's the beauty of digital media.

Never out of stock, no way for anyone to know how many were sold.

The perfect solution..

That being said, "we" have no standing to ask those questions,
as "we" don't own any of the "rights"..

Those that do own the rights may be to busy to check..

The only thing that really matters is that the customer purchased the content. It doesn't really matter in which format you purchased the content or whether or not there are actually physical discs or some other form of electronic backup in storage. It doesn't matter if the content that you purchase is legitimately licensed or not unless of course you know for a fact that it isn't, in which case you may be complicit in the infringement and exposed to a contributory or vicarious infringement action levied against you. However I think that in the case where the product is not properly licensed (and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say), the producer is probably not going to openly announce that little factoid. Therefore unless the producer of the content or the rights holders of the musical composition informs you that they are not properly licensed, then I don't think you have anything to worry about. I suppose I shouldn't make such posts without a disclaimer stating that I'm not an attorney and this is not a legal opinion, but rather it is my opinion based on over 20 years of dealing with music licensing issues.

That's ok. I question, anyway. I LOVE questioning.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

I totally agree with Chip on the fact that it doesn't matter how many songs you have, the first question from a perspective venue has been Do you have a following and how much do you charge. Most of the bars in my town could care less about how many songs you have. They do ask if you use You Tube to supplement your library to which I reply that I don't use You Tube for shows because I am a professional Karaoke provider and typing into a webbrowser search engine in You Tube's website and then dragging the browser over to the singer's screen is very far from professional and not that it's going to happen but if You Tube decides to go after any venue or host who is using the service in their bar, the dragging of the webbrowser to the singer screen is a dead give away for being caught in the act of breaking their terms of service. I too have a small library compared to others who boast having over 100,000 songs, I only have about 20,000 songs counting duplicates but I don't buy anything just to have it anymore. I buy what my singers request that I don't already have, usually at the show. I would rather just buy songs that will get sung than waste money on songs that just lie on my hard drive, even if that song only gets sung once.

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

My understanding is that the original agreement with Stingray was that SC was ONLY allowed to sell DISCS to the PROFESSIONAL market. And that all other forms (including streaming) was off the table.

So much for the gem "possessory license" baloney that Harrington spewed a few years back.

It's amazing to look at the progression of this collection of oldies:
1: 200 high-priced discs that were in very limited supply (to quote Harrington; "When they're gone, they're gone.")

2: Suddenly after the EMI lawsuit, Harrington announces: "We have enough gem sets for a long while"

3: After complaints of the stagnant content, another announcement; "We are releasing now a 'bonus disc' that we've been reserving."

4: And then it loses all value with; "Sign with us and you'll get the gem set FREE."

5: Suddenly, it has become; "We'll send you a USB drive and we'll hold onto the discs." (winkity, wink, wink)

It simply amazes me how they keep shoveling B.S. and KJ's keep falling for it...

To clear all of this up:

(1) All of the GEM series discs belong to PEP. It has been that way from the beginning. GEM series licensees do not own the discs.

(2) 2017 was the first year when we had a lot of renewals due, and when we went to process renewals, we found that a number of licensees had discarded the discs. This is a problem because, as noted above, they don't own the discs.

(3) So, instead of sending out discs, we send out a USB stick with the content. The discs themselves get labeled with the licensee's information and set aside in our warehouse. The warehouse is secure and has good fire protection, so the discs are much safer than if they were stored in somebody's garage. The reality is that there is always some risk of destruction regardless of where the discs are stored.

(4) Licensees are not required to run the content from the USB stick. If there is ever a problem with the content, such as a hard drive crash, the licensee can re-rip from the USB or request a new USB from us for the cost of shipping and handling.

(5) While the number of GEM sets is limited, we've had a number of returns at the end of the 5-year initial license, so we have enough to meet our licensing needs at present. Every set under current licensing has been carefully accounted for. Moreover, when you consider that we are automatically under scrutiny from the publishers (since we're still the most prominent karaoke brand in the U.S.), do you really think we would risk being sued by making extra copies of the GEM series just to make a few thousand extra dollars? I mean, come on. That would be colossally stupid.

I agree with Jim on the Gem stuff but what's really messed up is Pep company's child-like marketing tactics.

In today's day and age of Digital media, there are quite a few options available as far as securing the media and the USB thing is a REALLY BAD IDEA. why not make a downloads section and store the GEM tracks on the website and make them easily accessible to replace a bad track on the fly within the members account. This is very easy stuff to do and very easy to keep track / monitor where every track goes.

If it was me, I would offer the SC Karaoke machine pre-loaded with the Gem series.
Lock the hard drive to the machine just like CAVS does with their stuff.

No worries about any missing USB/CD crap.

So Jim you are sending out sticks and not discs? What's to keep the sticks to discs ratio 1:1? I mean you could make more sticks and not have to let any one know how many discs are backing them up right? Sort of like we know there is not enough gold to back up all of the paper money in the world, that is why we got off the gold standard.