Karaoke Forums

In tandem with ripping my library to digital, I bought the discs of a KJ who was getting out of the business. Instead of printing a half dozen or more 300+ page books, I bought some multi-page heavy plastic menu covers like you find in restaurants. Each can display 14 legal-sized pages (8-1/2" X 14").

What I've done is arrange the song titles like you might see on a restaurant menu. Instead of "Sandwiches", "Salads", "Entrees", etc. the most popular songs are displayed under "60's Pop", "80's Divas", "70's Duets", "Classic Rock", etc.

Over the years I've noticed people pour through page after page in our books for hours on end. But they still basically choose the same 200-300 songs! Why not have sort of a "Quickstart" listing of karaoke songs that everyone knows, and loves to hear and sing?

I would prefer people come make a personal connection with me if they want to see if I have some other song. It's only a second for me to look it up on Swift Elite. So far I've had just about every song people ask for. I'll still accommodate people with books, but I'll have just 2 Master Books next to my setup that cannot be brought back to the tables.

In all, the karaoke menus will have about 800 songs. Artists with multiple karaoke favorites (Elton John, Bon Jovi, Journey, Judds, etc.) are grouped separately.

Find the front and back covers (PDF) here:
Front Cover
Back Cover

Thanks in advance for your opinions!

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[font=Lucida Console]DangerousKaraoke.com[/font]
[font=Lucida Console]"Sing for the day, sing for the moment, sing for the time of your life!"[/font]

Dangerous, I think this is a great idea. Many first timers will want to do the most requested as everyone might be familiar with them. Your menu layout is pretty decent looking and I like the karaoke courtesies section on the back. Awesomeness!!!

Actually, I think that's pretty smart and logical. I like it, and will now "steal it", but will give Dangerous the credit in the preface... .

One of the things I did with my songbook was delete dupes. The SB software has an option for it, and the ability to rank manu preferance. So it goes something like: SC, DK, CB, SB, etc.

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

OMG I love this idea!! Now, if I can just find a restaurant going out of business... I'll give you credit! It's a great idea to get their brains jogged a little. It is especially good when I do a gig for children. They don't handle the big books well and this would be great for them. Thanks for sharing!

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It's called Karaoke Therapy...

I do a kids' show and have laminated "menus" that have all the kid-oriented music on them. I have many uses for the laminating machine I picked up at Staples. This is one of the best one. Kid do NOT do well with my books as they are rather large so this works perfectly. They find all the Hannah M and Cheetah Girls they need.

Dangerous- a Quickstart menu is a ROCKIN' idea! Now to figure out what songs to use...


Karen- kudo's to you as well! Little ( and sticky) hands probably find the menus much easier to handle, and you get an easy to clean surface! Terrific!


I'm on it!

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"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

Ditto on the dupes and being able to pick what manu firsst on Compuhost.

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

I had a similar Idea and it contained about 2,000 most played songs. I was just informed last night that people have been complaining. "Where are all of the songs that you used to have." Of course I had the main books next to me, and they never asked me if where the books went to. Murphys law, of course the owner hears about it. I was Then asked to put out the normal books tonight. I had 6 smaller books scattered and nobody was looking through them. They still defaulted to looking through the bigger books one page at a time. I ended up having a line of people wanting to look at the big book. This baffled me because the normal books have a lot of duplicates and probably about 500 pages with both sides printed on to look through and thats just the by artist book (huge). (Side note: the by artist books I made with the duplicates removed was about 35 pages both sides printed, with better formating.) The funny part was that only about 20 songs in the past few weeks were picked that were not in the smaller book. So my conclusion is the Cable TV Theory, most people still prefer having the option of flipping through 500 Channels, only to arrive at the same few Channels they could have had with a smaller package. I will still have the smaller ones available but only two. and the Majority will be the bigger books. I agree it is smarter, but you can't prove it to the customer without seeming like the bad guy, my test failed basically. Any other thoughts?

If i had a nickel for every person who came to me and said "oh wow you have song X cool" but does not sing it, and sings a more common song. More often than not song X has never been sung by anyone at my shows ever....


Probably happens at least once every show.

I do this half-assed by printing an on-purpose "dummy" book that has a little over half my collection.

What have I pulled out? I targeted:

1) artists that are rarely sung compared to their number of tracks (Tim McGraw, Beach Boys, Rolling Stones, Brooks & Dunn, Bee Gees, Celine Dion, Mariah, et al). I keep the well-known huge hits, and toss the obscure ones I have never heard sung.

2) Sinatra, Presley, and the Beatles. I have huge numbers of their songs, but it's the old faves that get sung. I pulled out 75 of 100 Sinatra, 100 of 130 Presley, 75 of 100 Beatles. It still makes for a good chunk in the book, but removes the sheer overkill.

3) Pop Hits tracks from more than 5 years ago. Unless a) the artist is done all the time (Creed, Matchbox 20, et al) or b) I recognize the song, I pull the PH97 and PH99 stuff. I leave at least one song for each artist.

4) Any song that is in SC Foundation 1 or 2, CBE 1,2,3, or Supercore, stays there. Most DK stays there.

5) Any song done in the last 5 years stays in unless it got hit under 1) and the artist has good coverage.

6) Any massively popular current artist (Duffy, Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood et al) gets all their songs in.

That pulled 4400 songs out of my book. It makes it smaller and more manageable. I went through the titles very carefully to remove the dupes in artists and songs (it is hard to get them all, but I got the vast majority).

The result is a book that is a half-inch thick when "perfect" bound or spiral bound. It has no dupes, is very error free and complete, and can be easily reprinted when new songs are added. The cost per book? $12.00, with plastic cover protection and color front-page.

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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.

I guess my advantage is I have never had a period where I had the "big" book.

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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.

How creative ! Great idea !

I recently discovered those stand up plastic holders on the tables to be useful. The manager found a bunch of them in storage and let me use them. I always tape up posters in the bar, but find people actually look at the stand ups more. I used them to advertise our Halloween Party.

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[shadow=pink][glow=deepskyblue]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[updown]~*~ MONKEY BUSINESS KARAOKE~*~ [/shadow][/updown][/glow]

Yes Excellent Idea Dan! Karaoke Menus.

-I just usually have pages in the front of my books with multiple pictures of the artists (britney, sinatra, mj, elvis) i got from photobucket, then listed their most popular songs and the manus right below their pictures.

Also for years have put lists of top 50 most requested, top 50 hip-hop, oldies, pop and country. Now the singers are asking for a top 100 of every genre.

I would like to use your GREAT IDEA and make song menus if that's okay with you..? I am redoing books this week and would like to add this feature.

Like Koyote, i will give you credit somewhere on the menu. Thanks for sharing!

John, feel free to use it

I started using these at my gigs a couple of weeks ago, and so far has had the predicted reactions:

- Small number of people asking "Are these all the songs you have?"

- Larger number of people coming up and asking for songs they want.

- Most people still singing the songs that are in the menus and quite happy with the new system.

By the way, in my hometown of New Orleans (where surprisingly there aren't very many karaoke bars!) Cat's Meow has been on Bourbon St. since the days of Pioneer Laser Discs. Take a look at a PDF of their entire song library. I don't think there are more than 500 songs on their whole list!

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[font=Lucida Console]DangerousKaraoke.com[/font]
[font=Lucida Console]"Sing for the day, sing for the moment, sing for the time of your life!"[/font]

Personally, I would credit the movie Duets.

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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.

Excellent man! You do present a professional approach to the industry. I would appreciate attending one of your shows.

But if those are the "Top 25 Most Requested Songs"???......my career would be over after a couple nights of that. Do you use?

800 songs in an easy to read menu ..seems like a HIT
Just make sure you advise them where to find the other 10,000 songs if they want to look