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My previous record was 35. I tied it tonight and again the place was packed.
It took over 2 hours to get through round one!
I started the night with a bad feeling which turned out to be wrong, thankfully.
Turned out to be a pretty good night after all.

Wow, good for you on a Sunday night! Woohoo.... I have two baby gigs I'm building right now - not hoping for rotations that large.

Two hours, isn't that a rather long wait for people to sing their next song?

The two hours was the first rotation - people singing the first song.

Diafel had 35 signed up by then . . .

(35 people * 5 minutes per song) / 60 minutes = 2.92 hours

That's the estimated time for the SECOND rotation!

With that many people signed up to sing, how are you going to wait less time without being unfair to every other singer in the rotation?

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Dave's not here.

That's the problem with succesful karaoke shows........

If they are to busy you start to lose singers for that fact that some singers want to sing more than 1 or 2 songs a night. It's a funny aspect of the KJ business but one that is unavoidable. As a KJ you just keep on running a great show and as fair a rotation as humanly possible. The singer that choose to leave ..oh well
You can't please everyone !!! Unless they pay a fee to sing or bribe
((((((pssssst can of worms being opened up)))))))))

Tired of the pirate topics we need another good BRIBE discussion !!! J/K

The biggest rotation that I personally have ever seen was 46 singers...so basically for my friends and myself it was a 2 song night. The KJ now has a sign posted that tells new singers about how long they can expect to wait before they are called up. There were so many singers that night that the KJ shut the books down 2 hours before the show ended...

The biggest rotation that I personally have ever seen was 46 singers...so basically for my friends and myself it was a 2 song night. The KJ now has a sign posted that tells new singers about how long they can expect to wait before they are called up. There were so many singers that night that the KJ shut the books down 2 hours before the show ended...

I guess I'll never understand why a host with that many singers doesn't start a new round after an hour or so. Mix the newcomers in with the ones who have already sung in the order you receive the new slips. The earlier you show up, the more you get to sing. It's not rocket surgery...

If you can work the prior singers in with the new singers the result is that both groups can stick around and you have a LONGER total rotation not a situation where a singer sings at least once or more an hour. If you cater exclusively to the first singers or the new entries into the venue, one group or the other will not stay around as long. Big rotations tend to result from trying to keep the prior singers AND new singers happy.


If you only favor "new" singers the prior singers tend to leave once the crowd builds, but if they know they can sing again even if they have to wait 2 hours many of the fanatics will stay. This keeps a big crowd and good energy and long rotations.

It may not be rocket science but what would you do with 40 different singers signing up in the first 30 minutes of the show?

If you have 35 people in the bar that want to sing, and are willing to stick around for 2 hours to do so, it is pretty obvious the rotation will be that long. In sutch situations I tell people it will be over an hour wait when they sign up. Some choose not to, but most wait their turn. If the wait is at least an hour that scares off most bar hoppers but if you have a big crowd you have a big rotation.

If it were just that simple ......

Thank you, Fred for this sensible statement!
Some here seem to assume that I was adding the singers in as the hours ticked by.
You know what they say about assuming...
It only makes an .......

Well, what if they ALL show up early? That's exactly what happened here.
Once I start a second rotation as you would have me do, what would you suggest I tell the 20 or so singers when they come up to ask why singers 1 through 15 got to sing twice and they haven't even got to sing once yet?
They've been waiting just as long as the first 15!

What is a ROTATION anyway ? When you say "start a NEW roatation"?

Isn't a karaoke "rotation" just an ever changing LIST of singers who sign up ?
You sing a song --you get back in line --However LONG or SHORT the line may be.
If you are a NEW SINGER you just go to the back of the line no matter how long the wait is . WAIT ..what about
DUETS & GROUP SONGS ?

What about the singer who just got out of work at 11:00 and wants to sing before closing.....OH NO ...the list is to long What to do.

Rotation Management ....simple YES ..keep everyone happy NO WAY

I very quickly kiboshed that idea. I made it very clear that if you did a duet or group song, that would count as your turn for the round.
In other words, if your butt hit my stage, you had your turn for the round. There were far too many people waiting to have people get up on stage multiple times before other singers never even got to glance at the stage.
I normally allow both in a duet to turn in one song each per round, but that clearly was not going to work on this night.
A table near the stage started booing and got rather vocal about it. I pointed at the loudest of the group and asked, on mic, " Are you singing a song later on?" He said "Yes." I said "Not anymore!" and laughed. The place broke up laughing and cheering and I then told the guy I was kidding, but he was free to keep it down from now on.
Only one doorknob (from the same table) tried to get in twice, near the end of the first round. He came up but had done a group tune early on. When I told him (all over the mic so everyone knew what was going on) that he would have to step down since he's already been up once, he said, "But that was AGES ago! I only got to sing one song so far." I told him" I know, and poor Kevin hasn't even got to sing ONCE, so come on up Kevin." The crowd went nuts cheering.
Most people respected my rules and knew why I had them in place.

Normally that is the way I work it, however like in this situation, if you get all 35 singers at once, then there is no working new singers into the next rotation. I've had this scenerio on occasion, NYE I had about 50 individual singers for the night - 32 signed up by the time I started - and within a couple minute of starting, had 20 more sign up. People were waiting until well after midnight to sing their first song, if you were one of the lucky ones, you actually got two songs that night.
On a avg night, I will generally get maybe 10-15 singers in the first round, about 9:30 I will start adding the new singers into the mix of the next round and continue from there. A new singer from that point will generally wait a minimum 20 minutes.

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