Karaoke Forums

I've been DJing at a bar for the last several months on Friday and Saturday night and now the owner wants to do Karaoke on Wednesday. He wants me to track down a system for him, and I have no clue what he needs.

Here is the set-up he currently has: I run PCDJ from MY laptop thru HIS MP3 mixer, from there its connected to 2-12's. There is also a mic connected to the mixer. the bar is small, only seats 40-50 tops.

I'm thinking a monitor, a karaoke software program to run on my laptop (like PCDJ KARAOKE), another mic, the music, etc. Am I missing something? Would this be a pain in the rear and should I just track him down a new stand along system?

Like I said, I'm clueless when it comes to karaoke. Can you help?

OK, he should probably have his own system... Software - compuhost I always recommend.

At LEAST 2 decent mics, monitor and a collection of songs (that is the expensive bit)

If you and the owner want to just try it out you might want to go disc based for a few shows. You can get a Karaoke player for around $100-$150. An RF modulator will let you go from the player to the house big screen TVs. Check ebay, everything you need is on there.

On ebay you can get several inexpensive collections just to start out like All Hits, Supercore, Sweet Georgia Brown, Chartbusters and a couple others. If you shop, you can find them for $40 - $125 each depending on which collection you're looking at.

If all goes well at your first few shows and you want to build up a better show, you can get the Sounchoice Foundations, Bricks and Mortar which is considered to be a high quality collection. Soundchoice is also much more expensive and you can easily spend $2,000, $3,000 or more to make a really good collection.

Other good quality collections are Zoom, Top Hits Monthly, Idol Makers and Legends. They're all on ebay and some of them you can buy directly from the manufacturers or from websites that sell Karaoke discs.

If all goes well then later you can go computerized which is another whole adventure and learning experience. Starting out with a player or two is a much easier way to get started, much easier. Even if you just use one player you'll need it later on to play customer discs and it's good to have a backup if your computer goes on the fritz.

Either way, you're going to need a few books so you can look up the songs and what disc they're on and for customers to decide what to sing. For that you'll need a program and there are several out there for $50 - $100.