Karaoke Forums

I called them yesterday and they said hopefully they would have something out by the end of the month..OK?? how long has it been??? I Think SC need to pick up the ball and run or give up.!

They're TOO BUSY in court suing kjs and Cavs! ....And working on their encrypted mediacloquing anti-viral streaming downloads that they eventually WON'T offer...

They've already stated they didn't even come close to making back the money they spent for the last 2 releases yet they found it on P2P sites. I don't blame them.

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Have they finally sued CAVS? That would be GRe..a..t!

I wouldn't hold my breath for ANY new music coming from Sound Choice.

From a newspaper article in the Charlotte Observer:

This summer, the company hired a private detective and had employees visit bars and restaurants around North Carolina. They allege the KJs named in the lawsuit possessed and used unauthorized, counterfeit copies of at least one work bearing the Sound Choice trademark, which appears at the beginning and end of each song.

“Our full-time business model is doing this,” Slep said. “We’ve pretty much stopped making music in order to go into these clubs and observe.

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Dave's not here.

I don't blame them either. When it wasn't a problem they pushed out thousands of songs but in the last few years they have been taking a big hit. To continue to produce anything that loses money is ridiculous. So folks don't get ticked with SC and others, get ticked at the criminals. Not suure what's happened in the last few years but people seem to prefer criminals to the good guys.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

Sound Choice is, if I recall correctly, down to only 8 employees. I believe they had more than 100 just a couple of years ago.

So very TRUE Tim!

At one time they had 3- 8 hour shifts making music, and yes, over 80 employees.

It will never be the same.

LM

Unfortunately, the problem is very simple - very few people even bother to purchase karaoke music anymore. The slowdown of the industry as a whole is obvious to me when compared to the situation 10-15 years ago. Sound Choice spends more money per song than the competitors - that is why their quality is so high and that is why it is becoming less and less worth the investment to produce new music. Nothing has hurt the industry more than the 100,000 song hard drive pirates, thanks for nothing you pirates! When you have one purchase that is "shared' through a piracy "ring" and distributed to 50 other KJs, this is what is hurting the production of new music. I hope Sound Choice is successful with it's efforts to bring these slimebags to court and HOPEFULLY put an end to this nonsense.

As a karaoke advocate I strongly encourage the purchase of LEGITIMATE karaoke music. KJs should also do their part to encourage the consumer market that those in the industry understand where there is REAL potential for increased product sales. Refusing to play customer CDGs because of some ridiculous reasons make such a KJ PART OF THE PROBLEM. Maybe when these narrow-minded KJs understand that THEY BENEFIT from consumer purchases they will change their policy.

I don't know, SC isn't free of culpability for their own demise here. Yes the pirates are a huge problem and certainly the cause. However I firmly believe that the pirates could have easily been defeated had companies like SC listened to and accommodated what their customers were asking for, which was reasonably priced electronic versions or at least custom CDG's where we didn't have to pay more than we would for a normal CD to get only one or two songs that were actually useful additions to our libraries.

Instead SC and others chose to stonewall their biggest customer base. They lashed out against "format shift", did all they could to fight making tracks available for legitimate purchase and download online, and spent more time and money going after the purchasers of pirated material rather than the suppliers of.

The RIAA went through much of the same experience and attempted the same stonewalling tactics. What they learned really quick was that was not a recipe for success. Now the difference was the RIAA is much stronger, larger and ultimately had mch more in terms of financial resources so they survived their mistake. Now you can go to Amazon and legally purchase 256Kbs MP3's with no DRM. All the things the RIAA originally fought against.

Microsoft is currently learning the same lesson. MS Office is a hugely pirated package. Why? Because it's used almost universally but was priced way beyond what any normal consumer could reasonably afford to pay for such a package. So now MS offers home & student versions for about a 1/4 of the normal retail price of the professional version. The result? Already documented reduction in the piracy of the software.

So yes I blame the pirates if SC does ultimately fail now, however, Sound Choice needs to look in the mirror when it comes to how did they fail to succesfully battle the pirates. They messed up and they're unfortunately looking like they're going to pay the price.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

Excellent post Tony! It's nice to be able to hear BOTH sides of the story and decide how sympathetic one should feel towards SC.

A lot of the easy karaoke fish have been caught--all the 60's, 70's, and 80's hits (oh yeah, and 90's too ). Licensing seems to be more difficult now. I hope SC's business picks up and they can get their studio back into full gear (maybe at some point they will be able to replace a detective with a bass guitar player, or maybe hire a detective that plays bass guitar), but they may not be redlining the tachometer like they were a few years ago. On the other hand, as the world's population grows, one would think there would be more music, more hits, and hence more cdg's. Hmmm....we'll have to see.

As a side note, I was just visting SC's mesage board and noticed there were 32 guests viewing it...so there's a crowd of people out there cheering for SC.

I think Sound Choice had one hand tied behind their back legally when it came to providing downloads. If they could have figured out how to legally make money doing it they probably would have. I think they are trying to figure out how to get around the format shifing with the MP3&G data discs but they aren't posting on this particular forum about it as people didn't want to discuss it.

That's all well and good, but again they're further behind than the RIAA. They should have seen the writing on the wall and learned from the RIAA's lesson. Instead they stood fast even after the RIAA relented. SC continues to stand firm, spending money to chase around hosts with pirated libraries rather than spending money where it would be helpful to their long term revenue growth.

I'm glad someone's doing something about the pirates, I really am. However, I wish it wasn't coming with the cost that the rest of us will have to pay.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

Yup, I bought ms office legally for $70 this year!

I think as long as Sound Choice sees a positive return on their investment, be it filing suit against KJs, bars or making karaoke tracks they will continue to do it. The question is whether they dropped the ball in selling their back catalog to Stingray. That probably had an influence on their reduction in staff numbers and in the amount they can make from selling older discs. Of course for their business model they may have seen the money fountain drying up and chose to get their last big payday before settling into a slow demise.

Jonn

Does the 8 employees include all the lawyers they've hired? I can see why financially they've had to let people go. It is expensive to keep doling out money to lawyers. Are they down in business because they've switched gears to go after the illegals and stopped putting out as much music? or is it they don't have the demand for the music? I'm curious.

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Look at their board, the requests are still pouring in so the demand is still there. But like said, the day they put a disc out & it's in thousands of illegal rigs via P2P type download sites, they can't justify making the music. They stated they didn't even come close to recouping their production costs on their last couple releases - yet the discs are heavily available in the illegal market.

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Do we know if they have hired a team of lawyers or are using lawyers on contingency? Contingency would save them a bit of money--especially with the local KJs being upset enough that they are taking the photo evidence on the pirates and sending it in themselves. If they are doing it that way then they conceivably COULD hit every locale as was stated in the Rumbolt TV segment.