Karaoke Forums

This is overlooked more often than anything. The best system in the world can't make up for lack of stage presence. An obnoxious rookie behind the Mic will run-em-off every time!

It's BEEN doing it!

You can have a $50 - $75 a night kj running your system. He's already got one person that's done it , and his son has done open mic contests.

$75 x 150 is $11,250. per year. That leaves plenty to get started.

Mackie CFX mixer - $400
Speakers - $200-$400
Microphones - $100 pair on up.
Cables, and misc equipment as well as an additional amp $200-$400.
Computer to put the music on... $450-$600
CDG Player to get started - $100 - $200

So for $2K or so, it's easy to get the hardware.
$3K for the music to get started, and then buy discs every week.

Payroll taxes aren't that much, or you could independently hire a KJ and have them do their own 1099.

I've been a successful restaurant manager for ten years, on top of my regular IT job. I didn't go into the spreadsheet scenario because this gentleman has ALREADY been working with one, and had a thriving business, so I didn't feel the need to get into Business 101. He asked for advice on what equipment to get, and what he was looking for.

The place I started out karaoke was doing it seven nights a week, they owned their own stuff, and I was the $50 a night guy. After a while, I knew I could do it better on my own.

You're absolutely correct on the other work on the back end, such as the ripping, songbook making, etc. Song slips... make one master with ten on it, and print away. You can always have them done at a local shop too by the bulk (my old venue did this).

I applaud your business sense, KK. The only reason I mentioned I knew what I was talking about was you were being pretty dismissive over my "experience".

Would you pay a guy $17.50 an hour to work at your coffee shop because he had his own coffee maker?

Or would you rather pay someone $7.50 an hour and buy the $500.00 coffee maker yourself?

It is a no-brainer as long as both dudes can proficiently brew and sell cups of coffee.



I don't think anyone has to spend $10,000 to GET STARTED in karaoke. I have been very successful, and I got started with a $400.00 loan from my mom for music and about $500.00 worth of old PA equipment I had from my days as a singer in a band (a $300 mixing amp and two cheap PA speakers).

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C Mc
KJ, FL

Would you pay a guy $17.50 an hour to work at your coffee shop because he had his own coffee maker?

Or would you rather pay someone $7.50 an hour and buy the $500.00 coffee maker yourself?

It is a no-brainer as long as both dudes can proficiently brew and sell cups of coffee.



I don't think anyone has to spend $10,000 to GET STARTED in karaoke. I have been very successful, and I got started with a $400.00 loan from my mom for music and about $500.00 worth of old PA equipment I had from my days as a singer in a band (a $300 mixing amp and two cheap PA speakers).

You can get started pretty inexpensively, but I think ALL of the good KJs keep up with the industry trends to some extent and update their hardware and music periodically.

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C Mc
KJ, FL

Badda- Frick'in- Bing

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

Your analogy in completely incorrect, sorry.

The more appropriate analogy would be me trying to buy a cow, so I could lower my milk expense!

IMHO, there are positives and negatives to either proposition, but the bottome line Shep is adding an addition level of responsibility when it comes to running the business. As hectic as that is why would you do that to yourself?

But hey, that's just me.

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

Hey Shep where you located? You might consider having a KJ working for the short term to bring things up to snuff and training someone to transition it for you. No different than any other large system installation, they spec it, install it, train the operator and you take it from there.

Just a thought.

SHEP
PM me --i'll hook you up for my KJ consulting fee !!!

Shep, welcome to the site.

Firstly, I or anybody else here shouldn't have to apologise to new members for the responses of other members. But I feel you do need an apology and you will probably not get one from the perpetrators. So, I apologise for the condescending and abnoxious comments some have made in response to your questions. It's really uncalled for.

You say you are already paying for an ASCAP and BMI license. As I understand it, karaoke is not covered under a standard licence for playing recorded music in your business and requires an additional fee. However, considering you have already been holding karaoke 3 nights per week, you probably have already been paying the extra for this, as it is the responsibility of the bar/establishment and not the person hired to provide the entertainment.

As for the costs of the karaoke music, I am not a KJ and so I can't offer any advice on that.

As to some of the other posters here, it's obvious that they have not read or understood the questions or what Shep has said. As for surmising all different KJ prices, etc., it's there in black and white.... 3 nights per week, 1 month = $1500.

Really, with the attitudes of some of the KJs on this site, I wouldn't blame Shep for wanting to set up his own system. Why would he want to risk getting in some condescending abnoxious stranger who can't read, rather than use an experienced KJ whose personality he already knows (his barman) along with his own son? C'mon guys, give him a break... hate to say this but being a KJ doesn't make you a glowworm no matter how much you think it might! (not directed at all KJs here, only the ones you know I'm talking about)

I'm going to have some used systems available next week if you are interested PM me.

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[img]<img%20src="http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j288/miller2348/myspace/images/Funny_Pics/images/21.gif"[/img]

CHECK YOUR ATTITUDE AT THE DOOR, STICK AROUND YOU JUST MIGHT HAVE SOME FUN

WOW! I didn't expect this many responses and opinions so soon. I appreciate the replies and advice. I'll try to clear up my position.

First, I had the same KJ for 3 years and we had a good working relationship. We had karaoke two nights a week and recently went to three. He had his own karaoke company with 2 or 3 other KJ's. I started paying him a month in advance about a year ago and it hadn't been a problem. He would discount his rate and we would end up with two nights free a month. His normal rate was $175 for 5 hours and $25 each additional hour. We often went for 6 or 7 hours. If you do the math, I was paying him over $25,000 a year.

About my bartender that KJ's. He worked another venue for the guy that did mine and bartended for me part time. He filled in at my place when the regular couldn't make it. Everyone knows and likes him, and he does a good job. We will pay him an hourly rate for KJing.

I already have some equipment in place for our open mike night. I have good quality Mackie speakers and a Mackie mixer mounted on the wall. We also have mics and stands. I just need to add a couple more pieces of equipment and music.
I am willing to spend several grand on music if necessary. I am in this business for the long haul and if I save half on karaoke, that "ain't nothing to sneeze at".

ASCAP and BMI have a fee for "enhanced" recorded music, which is what they call karaoke. That is included in my licensing.

Welcome Shep. Never mind CS, that time of the month apparently. At least you will know the one big thing that gets some folks fired up on here.


You do NOT have to have discs to be considered legal as long as you BUY your downloads from a reputable site or seller and have some type of receipt to prove it. Don't buy a pre loaded hard drive of music from someone unless they hand you the disks that have every song on them from the drive.
I would however advise you as others have not to go this way. If you have NO music, the cheapest way for you to get a good base is to buy disks, buy "lots' of them. SC is soundchoice and many believe them to have the best sound (sounds most like the original artist). I agree they are good but I have yet to buy from a manufacturer that the sound totally sucked. Maybe a song here or there. I guess I would stay away from Sweet Georgia Brown brand.
So go to eBay and find an 88 (quantity) cdg auction or 40 cdg auction or whatever. You do that math, you won't have to spend $3000 to get a good base. $1000 will get you a nice start. When you get to the point that duplicates are causing your discs to cost you more than a couple bucks a song, then maybe go the download route. That's the crossroad I am at now.

"There is a serious amount of non-show labor that we KJs invest, and expenses we incurr for running our business, now Shep is going to be taking that on with everything else associated with running his bar?? No thank you. "


The quote above is the thing you need to be prepared for. It's not just about the cost but the time involved to find the music, find a software program, install it, rip the music, print out the pages, stuff the books that you will have to buy with all the pages and of course, back everything up. If you are prepared to do with everything else others have said, by all means, run the karaoke yourself.

I will concur with Ripman... what he says makes sense.

Let me add, that Craigs list and Ebay are your friends. I have saved thousands of dollars buying used disks.

Sound Choice Foundation Series is a good start, DK, Chartbuster are all good ways to go.

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

I bought both foundations together for $400. I think they retail around $350 or more apiece. I had the advantage of being patient as I waited for a deal.

Today I purchased songs for the first time from the download site. The price was fantastic! As long as you buy 5 or more, you get a 20% discount. Works out to about 80 cents per song. You can preview the first 40 seconds or so of each song but difficult to tell who the manu is. Maybe someone knows the trick to that? Buykaroakedownloads was the website.
I bought 22 songs, downloaded them, imported them to compuhost, had to hand type them into fast tracks but I got my money's worth. 2 of the songs were definitely SGB and one sucked! 22 songs for $17.60 is pretty good once your library starts filling up with duplicates. But starting out, cost per song is probably going to be $.30 to $.50 or so depending on if one goes totally with one or two certain manus.

Hello Everyone! Yes, I am SHEP's son!

I would like to take a second to clear the air on a few things.

#1. We are in NO WAY attempting to start a Karaoke bussiness without paying for what we use. If that were the case, I could use the 10,000 song library that I already copied from the FORMER KJ, that WAS reputable and decided to take the money and run.

#2. Although I'm SHEP's SON, I'm not some 21 kid who hasn't been around. I have spent most of my life in the entertainment industry. Everywhere from the DJ both in a strip club to country bars and live radio. I'm also a musician and host an OPEN MIC night at our bar. I KNOW, probably more the most of the people insulting our intellegence, more about entertainment as a whole than I care to describe to the gentleman who so decided to dog on someone without looking a little deeper into the situation. How about a public apology C. STALEY!

#3. Just incase no one knows but a bartender with a great attutude makes MORE than a KJ on any given night. Our bartender use to work for the KJ that walked out on us, and since he makes more working for me than the $15/hr that he was making working for him.

#4. The question was asked as to how much we're willing to spend. The answer is simple........... How ever much it takes to do it RIGHT!

We paid our KJ over $24,000 last year for 3 nights a week. It is economically smart for us to spend the money on doing this ourselves. Not to mention, We could contract other Karaoke nights at other venues on the other 4 nights a week.

The real question WE have is, what is the RIGHT way.
Do we have to have the discs or can we download (by means of purchasing) the songs off the internet.

If we DO have to have the discs, Can I just put it into my Computer and burn them to my hard drive or is there a special player that we need?

If we can download them, what proof do you have that you paid for them? Do you need to keep a reciept of over 5000 songs that you download .99 at a time fro SoundChoice? Or is it just our word and concience that has to be clear?

We really dont need to know what the best site to get music from is. We need to know what we need as far as legal matters go.

Any true advice would be greatly appriciated.
Thanks,
Son of SHEP!

Then you will probably do fantastic! Attitude and delivery is 75% of the job in my opinion. Anybody can buy a system and we all have the same song selection more or less. It's the host's personality that makes all the difference.

Hi SOS,

Personally I would say go for discs and rip them to your computer. Whichever computer setup you use is up to you, that's a whole other thing.

It will take quite a while to rip them all, but at least you'll always have the originals. More importantly, you can get some great offers with discs from retailers and ebay which should work out a lot more economical than buying in mp3 format. For example, the supercore starter pack is a great quality set to get your main essential library started.
Look around at some of the karaoke retailer deals, some do a disc player + this supercore set in a bundle. That's how I got started. Even if you're going to use laptop, a cdg player and a full set of discs is a great thing to have as a backup!
Hopefully someone can advise about licencing, I have no idea about US licencing.

I bought Compuhost recently and it does a great professional job for running a karaoke show. >>Clicky Clicky to Compuhost<<

Or take that other guy's advice & *** off!

#1 Apologies for some of the comments you have been receiving

You really need to look at the songs that are on the HARD DRIVE you have.
Chances are any illegal hardrive is full of some starter sets ( Foundations / supercore dk etc )

You can BUY the discs and use the MP3+G files already on the DRIVE ??? As long as you have the disc ..WHY take time to RERIP discs you may already have on the drive ??????

I respectfully disagree.

Rips from someone other than yourself may not be at the right size (too compressed), may have tons of graphics errors, or worse yet, maybe corrupted altogether.


Our tech forum is filled with questions about people that do the ripping on their computers to the format they want, with the right software. Check it out, and do some research. Ask some questions!

Why in the world would a bar get rid of a successful host to do it on their own? Yes, it may look good on paper getting your own stuff and and hiring someone to run it. but as previously mentioned who is going to do all the "non-show stuff". Slips are small stuff. The making (correctly, nothing worse than typos and three titles of the same song) and updating of the books, buying music, maintaining/upgrading equipment, etc.

People go to shows precisely because of who the host is.

The other aspect is you turf the host, spend the money to get your own show up and running and it fails fr whatever reason. Now you are left with equipment that you might, if lucky get half value for.

I've often told my boss at the day job that there are some things that are just not worth doing due to the aggrevation it brings. He didn't listen one time and now regrets one contract we have. Sometimes giving someone some money to do a job is money well spent.

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