Karaoke Forums

Just let me know what songs and manus you want, I'll work on it if I don't have it! I know Moline pretty well.
This week I picked up two regulars from a pirate. I didn't have 4 songs that between them they wanted. When they saw how hard I worked for them to get what they wanted to play, they let me know they were done going to the other show with the kj with no personality and a crappy system. Both are very good singers.

_________________
KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

Thank you all for the info. Well now I know that the kj just srewed himself. Thanks again.

There's a guy up in B'ham that runs 14 shows through his 'company'. He says he does more shows than any karaoke company in the state. He boasts 75,000 songs at each of these shows. Anyone care to do the math on that?

Cool thing is, he's got a show in my town on Fridays, and is barely holds on to it. He's already lost the Wednesday gig he tried to take from me. How can such a blowhard, advertising in every medium, go undetected? If this guy doesn't draw attention no one will.

Makes a mockery of the law...I know it, how in the heck, if anyone was really looking, hasn't he been picked out for that? Argggg....

_________________
[font=Cursive]Don't Just Stand There.....SING something![/font]

As I had mentioned in a post a while back, I had gone to a show where a kj was having a problem with his/her hard drive. The kj made 1 phone call and low and behold another hard drive was brought to him. A friend had a hard drive already to go for the kj and who knows how many other multi riggers. Isn't that piracy?

Wow!! I'm new to the forum; haven't heard such a heated discussion as this one. I've already mentioned several times that I don't use a laptop, for ease of changing parts. Playing CDGs are not a problem for me either, and I don't have a player. I just have a Plextor drive that will read them, so it's already built into my system. My husband, who built the computer, spent time making sure we had a drive capable of doing it, and I have only had one customer bring in his own music in 6 months. I hardly ever use it, so in my situation, I wouldn't invest in a player. It all just depends on where you are and your customer base.

And I know most of my customers don't care where the music came from. They just want to sing. As far as KJ pay here, it's like pulling teeth to get more than $150 per show. And it's been like that since I started 5 years ago. I do get $200 for one of my week-end shows, but the owner didn't really want to pay it. Now, quite often, he says he doesn't need us Friday, and I'll find out that a DJ was in there. Probably working for cheaper than me. I could probably keep the show if I want to go down in my price, but we're driving an hour to accomodate his bar, and I don't see it being worth our time if we go down on our price. We do his Wednesdays for $100, but it's because we were getting paid better on Friday. He never cancels Wednesday. I guess that depends on where you are too.

10 new songs a week is not 2000 songs in a year. It is 520 songs in a year which would translate into 5200 songs over a ten year period. That is a far cry from 20,000 songs. I think I may have been at one of your shows a long time ago on Marco Island. You refused to play a song from my disc so our group left and went somewhere else. I also heard that you lost that gig shortly there after...... But I could be wrong. I never went back to that place while you were working there. If memory serves me correctly, you were one of those KJ's that liked to sing a lot and the volume was always much louder when you were singing as opposed to when anyone else was singing. Karaoke customers don't like that very much and they tend to complain to management and after enough complaints....people get fired and new people are brought in to replace them. IF you are the person that I'm thinking of, I hope that you have changed the way you treat the customers that provide a living for you.

How do you figure your addition here? Say 10 new songs a week would only be 520 new songs per year. 5200 new songs over 10 years.

edit - Ah I see Bruce already caught that.

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

Even computerized, I keep a player... One I don't trust the rip as you go stuff, and it's easy to defend against piracy when people say you're computerized and you stole my tracks, when I can point to my player and go "Um, my computer doesn't even have a cdrom in it! I play all discs on a player! Nyahhh!"

Yeah, most customers don't care. That's absolutely correct. THe members of our local yahoo club complained BITTERLY about my ranting and raving about piracy. The club owner finally shut me down and asked me to stop, as they just don't care. He allowed me a final say on the matter, and I blatenly informed them that their LACK of caring is why we have lost karaoke manufacterers to blatant piracy. And by not insisting that the KJs that they frequent they were NOT entitled to complaining about how hard it was to find new karaoke tracks, how impossible it is to find discontinued discs. That I would remind them EACH and every time that I had been one of a few people who tried to wake up the community and they shut me down... so don't come complaining when the law finally catches up and karaoke as a whole dries up, either from shut down shows, or the "fad" dying out.

Nobody wants to take responsibility for things like that. Fine. But I don't want to hear the whining afterwards.

It's why I can't get a steady gig in this town. I love KC, but I really regret leaving Portland!

Simply because anybody that works for a living does not steal, question the origin or accuse anybody of stealing their tools. It is not done in public or by professionals. I have been in many professions and have eliminated shade tree type competition with hard honest work and let my customers decide. I did not rely upon laws or lawsuits as they do now.

Call me old fashioned or whatever this is my life and my ways. The only ones who have the authority to walk in and question the legality of my tools concerning copyrights are the FBI or equivalent. I will say this again do not walk in and pester me or my hosts you will have one pissed off old man in your face and you better be prepared to defend yourself. And I will stand by you or any of my fellow hosts until proven otherwise. There is such a thing as probable cause. Dont Give Me A Cause.....

I grew up with shiners and bootleggers. Dont give me any crap for that either.

_________________
Join The Karaokle Singers Social Network. Upload Your Music!!

My curiosity got the best of me and I had to track down your web site. I couldn't help but notice, after seeing how bad your math was, that you and a friend of yours or a relative of yours are both in the karaoke business. According to your math, you should have 5200 songs if you bought one disc a week for ten years but you seem to have 20,000 songs. How many songs does your partner in New Jersey have? Does she have the same song catalogue as you do? Do you BOTH have an original disc for each and every song in your book or have you combined two smaller libraries into one BIG digital library that you both SHARE??? By the looks of things on your web site, the two of you seem to have an identical Song Book. I could see why some folks might be suspicious when two gals from two different states have the same exact book of songs. I'm not saying that you two gals are the first or only people to team up to expand their song lists but JEEEZ! to come here and brag about being completely legit could come off as being a little bit hypocritical.

Sounds like you're really on the ball, KCFL. While I'm not always looking for the latest and greatest song, I've been to shows where the song selection languished, and the songbooks literally started falling apart (made me almost want to sing I'm Just a Ghost In This House, ). Heck, even a new disc every couple months would have been great. I maintain that anyone who shows that kind of dedication will have a better chance at having a successful show.

In thinking abou this, I can see how someone advertising to sell hard drives on EBay or Craigslist may eventually get caught. But say a pirate has paid to copy a friend's hard drive or is using the illegal file sharing site for their songs. Even if someone tips off Sound Choice on their rat site, what cause do they really have to demand a KJ show proof that they are legal? They can't just march into a show and demand to see proof without real cause can they? So basically those kind of pirates can operate at will and that is why they think we are suckers for being legal and why the venue owners say, "Who cares? No one checks."

what cause? Dude, do you even know what the copyright law states?

They OWN that material. We might own the discs, but we don't have the right to go willy nilly with them.

I understand that there is a law. But is just seeing that a show is operated by computer enough cause to march in and demand to see proof of it being a legal show? And how often has that happened? I am just saying that the pirates in our area don't worry about being caught, nor do those who hire them. I am not advocating piracy.

If the authorities decided n a crackdown, it actually wouldn't be that difficult. There are some manufacturers who do not and cannot authorize their works for downloading (provided you're not busted just for format shifting). Second any legit download operation would probably co-operate (they don't want to be ripped off either). It really isn't rocket science and probably one of the easier investigations to conduct. Remember 1 or 100,000, really doesn't matter.

_________________
You can be strange but not a stranger

I had that happen just a couple of weeks ago. I have a mobile rig I use with a laptop and an external drive that keeps parity with my main rig at the bar. The drive at the bar started giving fits on running files and I didn't have my mobile rig in the tuck (Okay, I rode the motorcycle that night). A call home and my daughter brought me my external drive and I was running at 100% within 30 minutes.

A backup of your material is simply the smart thing. Most copyrights are using the 'like a book' determination of the legality of digital media. So long as it's only being used in one place at a time, it's legit.

There is a karaoke company in our area that is making a big deal on their MySpace about hiring P.I.s to go after pirates. His latest update is that he hired two P.I.s to go to two different shows run by the same company on the same night to request certain songs and prove they are using just one library. I don't know if he is just trying to mess with people's minds or is really doing that. But you wonder why he would go to all this expense and trouble if just reporting them would do the trick.

Give me his myspace addy. Whether pirated or not I still carry an oath to defend the Constitution of this Nation which I do not take lightly.

_________________
Join The Karaokle Singers Social Network. Upload Your Music!!