Karaoke Forums

You can add 'Headline Karaoke' to the list from around April 2009. It'll be little old me
I will be manufacturing properly licenced discs. All the info will be available on the website and there will be a sampler similar to the myspace player so that you can listen to a sample before you buy.
I will be starting out with a release of just a couple of discs, I'm just a one man show, so the catalogue will take time to build due to time & financing, but they will be produced with a lot of love & care.

I've researched the whole licencing thing and have of course, been in tough with the PRS-MCPS about licencing. I can't figure out how some existing manufacturers are doing it with the cheap discs because the PRS wants 10% with a minimum £3 per disc. I also have to pay another annual licence to put that sampler on my website because it plays copyright music. You usually get what you pay for and many cheap discs are quite poorly produced (although there are some gems to be found I have to say), but how on earth they can be retailed at £5 or less and still pay this licence baffles me.

I think the guy who does the Zoom discs is a musician like me. His discs are normally among the most expensive, but they're about what you'd expect to pay for a properly licenced and properly produced disc and his backing tracks are very very good!

All real instruments or midi sequenced?

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A bit of both. The guitars will always be real, as will most bass parts. It just depends on what the song calls for with regards to other instruments. For the most part midi will work perfectly well for everything else as long as it is programmed well and the synth module or DAW plugin is good. Sax is probably the only thing I might need to bring in a session guy for.
I'm going to experiment a little with drums. I do play the drums and I got a decent live kit in my studio. I also got some great drum sequencing gear which, if I spend the time & effort programming, will do a perfectly good job. The samples are all from real kits anyway. I guess it depends on what the song is and which will get us the best result.

I won't be churning them out as fast as I can just to start selling, I will make them to the best of my ability. It'll be up to the market to tell me if that will be good enough, I hope so!

I can see you plan no country -- there you would need a pedal steel player. Can you even find one in the UK?

Or is pedal steel something that MIDI does too?

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Midi can do pretty much anything these days, even singing! It is really just a question of the quality of the sound module & the acuracy of the programming. But yeah, if I do any country, I'd much rather find a good player, if there are any in the UK. I know Dave Gilmore plays pedal steel, but I'm not sure he'd be up for recording karaoke after the last few albums he's made.