Karaoke Forums

I’ve been wondering about song catalogs, AND THIS IS NOT ABOUT PIRATES!

A) I remember a time when some members of this forum minimized pirates as being real competition because, for one of many reasons their vast databases had many duplicates. But those who are critical of that, ignored the fact that the pirates are working with databases as large as 150,000 tracks.

Well, I have finally figured out that my database has 20% duplicates, and I wonder what % of dups others have found in their databases, particularly since some of you are de-duping as we speak? I have well over 500 discs, so is 20% good or bad?

B) Many people laud SC, but SC is not putting out new product and many of their old discs are no longer available.
(1) So what is a newbie to do who is trying to build a new library and doesn’t have SC to work with? Can someone have a database with little if any SC tracks and put on a successful show?
(2) What manus are favored by the old-timers when they purchase new material in order to keep their libraries up-to-date?

For the past eght yearsI been pretty steady at 25% accross almost 1000 disks

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EveningStar Entertainment & Events
JR & Michele LaPorte
Peoria, AZ

My library is about 13k karaoke. I have trimmed and pruned over 10 years and the only dupes are very few and deliberate for popular songs.

I would be comfortable now with 5k and downloading on the fly. Presently I am more concerned with DJ/Dance as karaoke is becoming less and less.

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

I have about 15K songs, 12K non dup'd. Not sure what that works out to.

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

That's about 20% dups.

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Swing Time Karaoke

Sure someone can put on a great show without Sound Choice tracks. They may be a bit better than some of the other versions for many songs but that is not always the case. I have been to good shows that use and dont use Sound choice, and also bad shows that use or dont use Sound Choice.

The quality (and quantity) of tracks is just one of many factors that make a good show. No KJ is going to get every factor just right, and what may be right at one show may not work well in another.

I can't see why a new KJ would not have SC to work with. While SC may not be making many new disks, in my experience the vast majority of songs that get sung have been around for some time. I would say that for my show the average age of a song is over 20 years (from the time the origional artist made the song). You can buy existing or used SC disks either new or used from many sources. As for other good or bad manus, this was addressed recently in a thread on this forum.

Often an individual company can do well with one genre of music and horrible for another. Other companies can be inconsistent with some great and some bad versions.

For me I have about 12k songs, and about 9k without dups.

We have about 17,500 songs with about 13,000 non-dupes (maybe a tad more, but over-estimating intentionally).

RE: Song quality - if you're adept at using your board, it is possible to take mediocre music and make it sound better than it really does with tweaking. Most people who use SGB know that you have to knock the highs down and boost the mids and lows and then it is tolerable.

About 14k, with about 11k individual.

Try and find used bulk SC offerings. (If I don't get to them first ) I bought two major bulk purchases within the last two years, which added a bunch of hard to find, SC only tracks to the library. Just keep checking craigslist and ebay.

Stick to Sunfly/SBI if you are looking for more unique and different catalog offerings.

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Wam bam thank you m'am.

I am only one year in and not an oldtimer, except in age, but if I had it to do over again I would have bought SC Foundations ! and 2 as the base. 2 was a few months from coming out when we started so I only got 1 and I find I have been individually filling requests that would have been on #2. We got the SGB and it really came in handy for showing us that people wanted to sing something other than oldie country at our venue. You can argue about the quality but their song selection hit a lot of popular ones. If a song gets done regularly off them and it is not a good enough version I replace it.

The Chartbuster Best Of sets are good also. We got a lot of Country that way. Our friends at the same venue pretty much base their show on the Essentials.

For new I get Chartbuster for country and some pop but prefer SBI and Zoom for newer pop/rock. Have also dabbled in Extreme and MasterMix for things like Megadeath. Again--a quality argument for some--but Legends has a lot of popular oldies that are hard to get these days so when they are on sale at $5/pop I will get some of them. We have one singer who prefers the Legends Janis Joplin to the Sound Choice.

I don't feel that deprived as far as being able to find music these days, especially as the discs cost much less than when I bought my first Sound CHoice Jimmy Buffett at $30. Now Sound Choice is down in price, we have SBI et al and lots of sales on the old stuff. And I'm not counting Sound Choice as being out yet. They may surprise us.

We have one singer who prefers the Legends Janis Joplin to the Sound Choice.

Leopard - I also prefer the Legends JJ to the others - Legends did good on this one...not so much on others sadly.

It looks like I am on the high end with 28% duplicates.
I started out with the SC foundations and quickly added the 5 bricks. These are still readily available and you can't go wrong with them. There still seems to be plenty of SC product to buy, especially if you are just building your collection. Chartbuster may have even more available and also put out great collections. With a little more effort, you could build a good collection by searching for Pop Hits Monthly, which are often on sale. To answer the question about SC. I love their stuff, but a person could easily have a great selection without any of the SC catalog included.

When I started my collection in early 2005 I was somewhat against Sound Choice, partly because of their stance regarding computer use. As time went on I had several singers ask for the Sound Choice version of song X. Now I have replaced many songs with Sound Choice versions to keep customers happy. Is sound choice better compared to some brands today? I don't know.. perhaps it's just that most KJs got them and now people have grown up with them. I get people asking for Sound Choice versions of songs that Sound Choice have never made!

As for my collection, over 11000 unique songs, over 18K incl dupes (but I am combining 2 rigs here so there should be a lot of dupes!)

- Jonn

As far as comparable manufacturers, these are my picks:

For standards and oldies, DK
For pop and urban tracks, Pop Hits Monthly
for country, Chartbusters

You can certainly do a great show without Sound Choice. The problem is that customers are so used to looking for Sound Choice that they don't necessarily feel comfortable giving the others a chance. You just have to show them that the others are good, as well.

birdofsong