I'm a KJ newbie. I am also a musician - run a recording studio for a living. Sort of stumbled into Karaoke.
There was this little hole in the wall club in walking distance from my house that my wife and I dropped by one night last year. Had no idea there was Karaoke on weekends. At first, I had the initial "I play in a band and this is cheesy" reaction-- but a few drinks and a few persistent prods from my wife and I took a turn singing, then again, and again. We had a blast and started hanging out there a night or two a week. The KJ was a nice guy, but had the personality of a basketball
Many months later, he and the owner had a disagreement and he got fired. By this time, I knew the owners pretty well and they asked if I'd be interested in KJing.
I was a radio DJ for almost a decade, did a club dj thing back when vinyl was still king, toured as a sound engineer and fronted several bands (including one at the time), so I'm thinking "how hard could this be?" and told them I'd look into it. Man, was I in for a surprise. The audio gear was the easy part-- so at first I figured a few thousand and I could put together a decent rig. As a writer, I have an absolute rule about downloading free music anyway, but it really cracked me up to find out how many of these KJ's and clubs were using stolen music. After weeks of research, and this forum was a big help btw, I ran the numbers and realized that for about 4 times my first gestimate, i could actually make more per night than gigging with a band.
To get my feet wet, I leased a system from a Karaoke retail place in town, being assured that all the music was legal. That's been about six weeks now, and I after this weekend my own rig will be ready to go. I've been ripping CD's for weeks and weeks... I feel your pain!!! This is not "easy", but I think it will be rewarding in the long run. The club has tripled their nightly income in the past six weeks, and everybody, including me, seems to be having a great time.
Anyway, just wanted to say hello and thank all of you forum members for all the info. In a matter of weeks, I was able to gain insight from years of experience contained in the threads here. Guess it's time to come of of the woodwork and post a bit.
I'll brag on my little rig later
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