Karaoke Forums

People seem frustrated both with the fact that the suits aren't happening fast enough and that the investigations aren't thorough enough. Those two tend to work against each other.

...Does anyone have any idea what the percentage of Piracy is in the software, movie or music industry?

...In the Karaoke Industry, we've been told it's around 90-95% of all KJs have some "Pirated Tracks." Also, recently we were told there's roughly around 45,000 KJs out in today's marketplace. So, without attempting to drag the Manufacturers into this, let's just stick with KJs who use pirated tracks and crunch some numbers here.

...45,000 KJs in the market. 90% (*) of them are using pirated tracks. So 90% x 45,000 KJs equals 40,500 (**) Pirating KJs. From what many have stated, the average Illegally Loaded Hard Drive has an around 100,000 (***) Karaoke Tracks. The average retail value of each track is around $1.00(****). So, $1.00 Per Track x 100,000 Karaoke Tracks equals $100,000.00 worth of Karaoke Music x 40,500 Pirates equals $4,050,000,000.00.

...(*) The 90-95% has been tossed around by various posters and manufacturers.
...(**) Perhaps not all of the 40,500 KJs have 100,000 (+/-)Illegally Obtained Tracks but it is a very interesting number. So, does that mean that only 4500 hundred of us are keeping the Karaoke Manufacturers in Business or what's left of them?
...(***) Only used 100,000 Tracks as an average. Have seen various numbers by several different sellers of Illegally Loaded Hard Driver over the years.
...(****) The $1.00 was just an average that I personally used. You can punch in any number but for this example, it was used from previous years' prices to current prices (including Laser Discs, Cdgs and downloads).

...The above was only being used as an example. However, if I were in the Karaoke Manufacturing Business and had those numbers thrown at me, I would probably be shutting my doors or filing lawsuits. I do agree, you do have to allow for a certain percentage of theft in any business but 90-95%? How could you expect to survive?

That is only if you believe that crap. I don't believe there are that many KJs out there, and I don't believe that 95% are using pirated tracks.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

If I were to go by our tiny area I would put it at 60% and possibly 70. But it gets higher if you count all of the ones that seem to surface briefly then disappear. Two new shows popped up recently but I don't know their status. It also goes a bit higher if you count a few that decided to go "underground" and just do private parties rather than risk bar exposure. And it doesn't count all of the singers who also have their own drives and host parties for their friends.

We just happen to have a small holdout of disc hosts here that keeps our pirate percentage a bit lower. But move out a bit to the larger cities and from what I hear it gets worse. I have singers coming in lecturing me with pirate rhetoric and assuring me their big city host friends have shown them they are Sound Choice certified. Pretty amazing considering there is only one company so far in the area who really is.

How many KJs do you think are out there? And how many of them do you think are using pirated tracks?

45,000 out of a population of over 317M is not that many, considering the number of huge and small cities and how many thousands of towns. It seems to be a reasonable number. As for the percentage of pirates out there, I don't know but based on the number of people here, from various parts of the US, the number of sales on E-Bay and the like, and the number of sales of discs, I'd say from mid-range to high, but I'm not that sure it's in the 90% but still high enough to affect all US manufacturers.

Will you stop piracy? No more than we can stop murders, embezzlers, drug trafficking or another crime but should we just stop fighting and if so, do we stop fighting all other crimes?

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You can be strange but not a stranger

I don't know if the amount of kj's out there is accurate, but i'm willing to bet that out of all that ARE out there, the 95% are pirates are fairly accurate - at least around here I don't think I have seen a legit kj in quite a while. Most don't have books & state they have every song ever made - including some that haven't been available for YEARS.

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

I would say, from my own personal experience that the percentage varies, depending on where you are, and if your in a high density population.

In Vancouver, BC *that's in canada for those of you who flunked geometry * I would definately say the percentage is somewhere between 80-90%. In fact, I would even go as far to say that if you want to find a pirate show in that ares, get a listing of karaoke shows, put the list on the wall, throw five darts and then go visit them.

I can almost guaruntee you that at least two of them will be using pirated hard drive, and maybe even BRAG about using them

Here where I live in high river, ab and the surrounding area, I would say the percentage is considerably lower, maybe even as low as 40% because of the efforts of the only remaining retail karaoke shop in southern alberta. Because of them, I would say anywhere between 60-80% of the shows I have been to are disc based, altho that number seems to be rapidly descreasing.

-James



-James

Half that amount of KJs, and MAYBE a 60% rate of piracy.

Maybe in big cities there are tons of pirates and tons of KJs. My town have five bars, a Moose Lodge, and a restaurant. Three of the bars the moose lodge, and the restaurant have karaoke. I run the karaoke in two of those bars. I may be working my way into bar number three, too. Not much room for pirates around here. The restaurant's karaoke is run by an older gentleman, who runs a very good, LEGAL show. I don't know who runs the Moose Lodge. He and I run the same night.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

OK, so we're still talking about 13,500 pirate operators, even with your estimates.

A typical pirate operator has at least 10,000 SC tracks on his hard drive.

That's 135 million stolen tracks. If you assigned a wholesale value of $0.99 to each one--which is somewhat less than the historical wholesale average--that's over $133 million in costs that these pirate KJs are avoiding, just with respect to SC.

And you think we should just step aside and forget about that, and focus instead on selling individual downloads?

Why would a person who is willing to steal en masse pay $0.99 for a download?

As has been thrown in my face about 25 times on this forum, I WAS going to be a pirate. I pay MORE than .99 a download for my songs, and I LOVE IT!! If you make the music available then you may at the very least, reduce the piracy by 50%. I am not going to spend $4,500 for your 6,000 song package because I know MANY of those songs would be useless to me. BUT, I would GLADLY pay $1.99 a song to download whatever songs I needed from the SC catalog, at the time I needed them.

You talk about stepping aside from collecting $133 million dollars. Do you HONESTLY think you will come ANYWHERE near that amount with your lawsuits?? If you do, then you are a fool. AND you aren't just going after pirates. You go after shifters, too. They aren't costing you a penny because they paid for their music to begin with, unless of course they are multi-rigging on one set of discs. But single riggers who shift aren't costing you a single penny. But THOSE are the ones you are trying to police.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

Smooth, you're trying to make it sound like they are suing shifters for tens of thousands of dollars and that is patently untrue. They are going after their media shifting fee of $150 prior to a lawsuit or $500 if it has to go to a Discovery. The ones that go forward further are those where there is no 1:1.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

Smooth makes a valid point.

There is a lot of music in the GEM set that will never get used.
There are many people who simply can't afford to pay even $3000 for a GEM when it goes on special.
There are many people who can't afford to make payments on it as well.

iTunes has widely been regarded for single handedly saving the music industry and putting them back in a much more profitable situation. People are simply more willing to pay 99 cents a track instead of $18 for an album when all they want is one or two tracks.

The cable and satellite providers are facing a similar threat from iTunes and other content providers who offer the ability to buy individual shows or episodes instead of paying $100/mo for more content than they could every possibly consume. A la carte offering from cable providers will be their only solution or they will be replaced by newer services.

In spite of the debate around whether non-US based karaoke download providers are licensed or legal or whatever, the fact is, people are more willing to pay for only what they want than to be presented with more than then need or things that are irrelevant to them at an even higher cost.

If the US karaoke providers - including Digitrax - don't do more to adapt to customer habits, they will cease to be. Digitrax has a framework in place, but they still have some serious issues to content with (very poor customer service, no self-service options, lack of relevant content). Digitrax may or may not get it right, but they are at least making an effort.

If Sound Choice could pull together a download service with some relevant content or even leveraging some of their back library, they would probably see larger and more consistent revenues, not to mention better PR, over suing hosts.

And to Smooth's point about media-shifting - he is right - the act of media shifting alone cause no loss of revenue to Sound Choice. It is when someone distributes the media shifter files that there is a monetary loss. But until Sound Choice shuts down the hard drive sellers, the iRC channels, and the Torrents, they will continue to bleed money on their old content.

-Chris

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-Chris

The only thing I remember from Geometry was the Theorem for Congruent Triangle Proofs that stated, "If you can prove A, S, S (Angle, Side, Side), then you are one too."

and start to recover as the music and movie industries as a whole have been recovering....yes.
itunes, Amazon, Hulu have all made a huge impact on those industries getting more content to customers in the manner the customer wants (just look at the threads on here about ditching cable and satellite for Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu), even Blockbuster has gone to digital downloads because that is what people want and if they tried to continue forcing DVD on people, they would be out of business right now (and almost were) like Hollywood video etc.


same reason they did with itunes and amazon, the full disc is rarely worth the $18 price but a $.99 download is worth it.
the pirates have not gone away, but more are buying one off songs that were stealing it PLUS the ones who did not steal it but just went without the song are buying those one or two songs they wanted putting more money in the publishers coffers than they would have before.

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

This is what needs to take place on a truly popular and revolutionary scale for karaoke. Either one company owns the market like iTunes does, or companies partner up and create a shared portal to distribute together. Digitrax currently has elements of both and a distinct advantage over anyone US producer so far. But as I mentioned, they have some serious roadblocks to overcome before they can ever gain mass appeal. there is opportunity for other companies to make a run for the #1 spot but time is running out. Digitrax will figure it out soon enough and unless something remarkable takes place, they look to be the "go to" cloud-centric karaoke provider for the next generation.

-Chris

ps - I really hope someone else figures it out though.

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-Chris

It truly appears that the actual facts of how this situation can best be resolved for the future is very convoluted with some attempt to balance the complacency about the past with issues about how to move into the future. Although it may not be spelled out, the lack of desire to accept less than the type of profit margins experienced in the "buy this CD of junk songs to get one song" era is being resisted...that would be a very infantile approach, IMO...

A bit confusing, Jim. You have stated several times on the forum that you feel SC's tracks are SC's compositions. That would make them originals, and not the music of the publishers that I claim they are. If that is the case, the artist orgs such as BMI, SECAC, and ASCAP claim that their licensing would cover that ( including DISPLAY per your post), to the point where they charge specific fees for karaoke shows, supposedly passing on royalties to said artists. Does SC do a check to make sure that absolutely none of the studio musicians/staff are members of those orgs? It'd be a rare group to be found without a single member...just a thought. Also, your statement that no PRO fees covers producers would lead one to think that the groups collecting fees for karaoke shows may have overstepped their legal bounds. Is that what you are stating?

So, per the original discussion: Either SC's tracks are actually owned by the publishers/owners who grant rights-, in which case the display of lyric swipes is NOT specifically licensed for karaoke shows as I originally claimed

OR

Your previous claims of music composition ownership by SC is correct, in which case the licensing provided by the artist orgs allows for the display of sweeps and SC has nothing to sue for. Keep in mind that- per your own post- the SOURCE of the music and displays did not come into question.

So which is it?

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

Half that amount of KJs, and MAYBE a 60% rate of piracy.
[/quote]

OK, so we're still talking about 13,500 pirate operators, even with your estimates.

A typical pirate operator has at least 10,000 SC tracks on his hard drive.

That's 135 million stolen tracks. If you assigned a wholesale value of $0.99 to each one--which is somewhat less than the historical wholesale average--that's over $133 million in costs that these pirate KJs are avoiding, just with respect to SC.

And you think we should just step aside and forget about that, and focus instead on selling individual downloads?

Why would a person who is willing to steal en masse pay $0.99 for a download?[/quote]


The amount or percentage is fun to talk about, but the real issue is what has been done or can be done to stem their growth and eventually shut them down.

Unfortunately, the answer to both is absolutely nothing at this point. SC has shown failure in terms of reducing piracy even if they made some money in the process, and no one else seems to give enough of a damn to do it right.

The ONLY answer would be in the hands of a government empowered law enforcement agency specifically formed to combat the problem. I say specifically formed for this purpose, because existing agencies simply have their plates filled with higher priority ( Terrorism, physical robbery/assault, high priority targeted cyber-attacks, extortion, gang warfare, drug catels, and on, and on...) problems that make Karaoke/music/movie piracy problems seem a bit trite.

I've got a guy here ( actually a few miles away over the border in NY) that advertises on the web and specifically that he has two hundred and fifty THOUSAND karaoke songs to choose from. He's been in business a little over 4 years. I know his day job is supermarket cashier. Kind of hard to believe he could or did pay for those tracks. SC has been aware of himsince a bit after he started, because I know he was contacted. Nothing. Of the few ACTUAL pirates ( and there were only a couple) named in the NJ suit that went away? Still in business, and advertising their services ( though only one has a single venue that allows that host to advertise it's name) per their websites.

It HAS to be a government empowered law enforcement agency. Also, said agency would actually target PIRATES, having no interest in monetary suits. That means they would actually concentrate on the actual bad guys.

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

No, that isn't the question. I would bet that many pirates who bought a one time drive ARE paying more than $0.99 for downloads to keep up. The real question is why would someone who is willing to buy a drive pay $3000 for a bulk starter kit that has a bunch of stuff they do not want? They wouldn't! Which makes the point that they wouldn't be in the karaoke business without the drives and they would STILL not be SC customers. This only further proves the point that the drives CREATE business for SC and create added competition for KJs. I imagine many of the pirates looked for a "reasonable" method to get into the business before settling on the drives and it may be that a cloud system or buy as you go system may be the attractive alternative to drives. Buying a bulk deal with a bulk price STILL will not.