Karaoke Forums

Check it out https://paydotcom.com/r/77316/darni/26107458/

Holy spam, Batman!

What People are saying...

"Cool Illegal Karaoke without the stigma of Craigs List"

"If we dont's steal from Sound-Choice no one seems to care"

"They break trademark laws so you dont have to"

The samples they have are straight up rip off of other karaoke companies.

Man I feel like a woman -- Chartbusters

You're the one that I want -- Sound Choice

Foolish -- Top hits monthly??

Well that's ok, I'll forward it to Kurt and crew.

Sad, but also funny as heck!

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

Don't know who's version of Man I Feel Like a Woman they used but it's not Chartbusters. Different backround singers and Chartbuster doesn't use the British spelling (colour) of color that their sample does, also the graphics are a different style from the Chartbuster verison I have. The song from Grease is very close musically, but the timing is slightly different and the graphics aren't the same as found on SC8910. I remember seeing this set on line a number of years ago so it's not that new.

Their disclaimer states that none of their material is any of the English Manus, so who knows where it came from. I'm not saying that they are or aren't legal (at that price, like you I also have my doubts), but best make sure you're right before you accuse them of stealing someone else's material.

Just my two cents.

They may or may not have paid whoever had or has the rights to the recordings but the standard rate is either 7 cents or 13 cents per song copy to the artist for song rights. That is what any artist would have to pay to make a cover version of a song. In addition they would have to pay the rights to sync the video.

This is a standardized rate that everyone should be paying, it is not negotiable.

This cost is a bit hard to relate to the 5 cents per song cost they claim.

Even if some other company gave them the recordings for free they have to pay the 7 cents per song (PLUS THE Video fee for the lyrics) to the artists who wrote the song. Realistically the rate is far more than 7 cents, probably nearer 50-70 cents per song copy on average for the rights.

Current Rate (just checked) is 9.1 cents per song or 1.75 cents per min whichever is more. And remember this is only one of 3 mandatory licenses that must be paid by the manu to the ORIGONAL artists who wrote the song.
http://www.copyright.gov/carp/m200a.html

Gotta love this statement - "With the help of several recording studios" Seems like theft equals theft nowadays.

Then of course there's - "That's right, you'll pay so little for it that all it costs is $0.05 per song! That's an astonishing 5 cents per song!" Does that even come close to a royaly not to mention production costs.

Do any of our Portland people know this person?

And for anyone who thinks this is legit, I have a couple of bridges in Halifax for sale, very cheap. Make me an offer.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

Speaking of Halifax ... Kind of o/t here - but my husband's band is being played big-time by a radio station in Halifax - in fact, they have requested copies of their CD for give-aways. I'll try and find out which station.

Fred:

Out of respect to you I tried to understand your post. I also followed the link that you provided, which motivated me to check out other web postings regarding mechanical royalties.

Frankly, I can't figure out much of what you are saying.
1) Does the 9.1 cent royalty pertain to all songs that have been copyrighted "currently" or does it apply to all tracks "currently" put into use regardless of when they were first copyrighted?
2) If the cost is nearer 50-70 cents for "rights', as you stated, there is no profit left to speak of when you buy a disc with 15 tracks on it for, let's say, $18. There is a retailer involved, and perhaps a distributor. My guess is the retailer doesn't pay more than $15 for the disc. Assuming the manufacturer gets the remaining $15, which is a $1 per track, what did it really cost to generate that $15

After the 50-70 cents you mention for rights - WORKING OUR WAY BACKWARDS FROM THE POINT OF SALE - there are:
Shipping costs
Shipping Department overhead
Manufacturing costs
Manufacturing department overhead
Production costs
Production department overhead
Legal Department Costs
General O/H (rent, utilities, insurance, taxes, etc)

I don't see where there is any profit even when selling karaoke discs for full price?

The record industry, in general, is having a hard time making money on CD;s and they produce 10's of thousands more copies per release than ever produced by a karaoke manufacturer, and most of the recording industry, according to most sources, can just about cover their overhead and make a small profit margin these days!

If I have to really start to dissect the economics of karaoke as you have, Fred, I would have to wonder if any karaoke disc that I purchased is "legal", regardless of where it came from?

Remember, CB told me the SCDG of the Essential volumes were "legal" and licensed products, but I was also told they don't really know how many copies were produced as compared to the license agreement. And since they don't know, I would imagine it is because they DON'T want to know!

Yes there is minimal profit in the Legal karaoke industry. That is the point.
But then again most musicians don't get rich either. The ones that do get rich have lots of lawyers fighting for them (meaning that the lawyers get a lot of the cut).

Currently copyrighted songs include all music that was written/created and is automatic for new music (any music written in the US is automatically copyrighted).
You do not have to register it as "origional" to get a copyright the mere act of publishing it creates the copyright.

According to current law only music written before 1922 is in the public domain.

Except for a very small number of exceptions that pretty much covers nearly all music likely to be sung at Karaoke.

My take on the cost of making a legal karoke disk is 15 songs)
$18 store cost

7-9$ royalty
3$ store profit (of course they have to make all of their costs out of this)
1-2$ studio musicians
.50$ cost to make the karaoke lyrics, file press and package disks.
2-3$ profit, shipping, management etc.
1-2$ legal costs.

Of course the regular music industry can sell a disk for a lot less if the origional artist is involved. This is because they are the ones setting the royalty rates. But in the music industry a lot of promotion, advertising etc is involved and the artist is likeky to see only a fraction of the cost of the CD (managers, legal team etc). Sure a few musicians on the very top get rich, but most do not.

A lot of the disks out there have far less than 15 karoake songs, and in some cases a mass market product sold at Wall-mart or similar outlets can push the royalty price per song down a few cents, possibly into the 30-40 cents per song range by massive volume.

As for knowing if every song liscence is up to date of course the front office guy (or even company president) is not going to give out that info even if they are doing their best to be legal. A mis-statement on a production run volume could land them in legal hot water.

All of the major US manus have had their legal problems in making CD products and keeping legal.


As for copyrights and patents, yes on complex items most of what people purchase is NOT legal. There are lots of competing and violated patents. Usually it is a small portion of the total costs, the business pages are full of lawsuits involving major companies sueing each other. Eventually some of it is worked out, and often it is a minor detail.

Some companies in the karaoke industry appear to put in the effort to follow the law, but even so sometimes they have problems. Even finding out who owns a song can be hard at times when a band breaks up, or members die. It is sometimes much easier to find somone who claims that they own it (and sometimes that person really thinks that they do).

As KJs we have the option of buying from companies that appear to be trying to follow the laws, or ones that totally ignore them.

Man I Feel Like A Woman looks like it's the Legends version same colours and sweeps but still highly illegal.

From the fine print disclaimer WAAAYYY at the bottom of that incredibly long page.

Fred, aren't you setting the bar very high for KJ's?
- I am not going to base purchasing decisions upon appearances"
- I am not going to analyze the costs, particularly since they are unknown to me, of producing karaoke tracks.
- I am not going to try to define what companies totally ignore the law
- Nor am I going to try to determine who faithfully and completely follows the law, which should be the standard if we were going to adopt one
- I am not going to set a standard for purchasing karaoke tracks that far exceed the standards I have established for making other, more important, purchases.

And what would you make of the following two posts?



Based upon prior experiences of my own, I could interpret the statement from Superstar DVD, as quoted in the prior post, to be a public service announcement informing the public that the DVD DOES NOT contain certain defined products. So, if anyone who believes they will be getting such tracks on their DVD, they are not!

In the previous post didn't Gnome Karaoke state that the "Man, I Feel Like A Woman" track looks, to him, like it was produced by Legends!

And perhaps this this disclaimer was something that Legend's lawyers suggested be implemented by Superstar? Perhaps it was court ordered?

Well we have their word on it that the songs were legally produced.

Next time I am on jury duty, I will just ask the suspect if they did it, should make it a lot easier. Whats the chance that a guilty person would also be a liar??? I see a vast simplification of our whole legal system.

Regardless of WHAT the economics of karaoke are do you really think that most likely to be legal (SC, CB ) need to charge over a dollar a song while this company seems to have gotten the cost town to under 1/20th that.

How could they make that sort of cost savings and be legal??? Or are chartbuster and sound-choice just that greedy. I seriously doubt the greedy assertation.

Capitalism works well enough that two comparable "new" mass produced products made under the same laws and conditions are very unlikely to differ 20 fold in price.

I dont have to know the economics of a car company to think it is fishy for someone tring to sell me a "brand new car" for $1000 that looks the same as the one on the dealers lot being sold down the street at a dealer for $20,000 even if the "Ford" label is not on the car.

I dont buy hamburger for 5 cents a pound or TVs being sold for $5 I know nothing about those industries but I see what the normal price is and I know that something being sold for 1/20th the normal price is probably wrong somehow.

PS find me a web page for "Trill. Inc." or "Ant Studios" and tell me that any company that does such work would NOT have a web page these days.

This isn't just a Portland thing. Craigslists all over the country have the same ad but with a different "local" person as the front. Last time this went round I tried to look up Ant Studios and Trill and couldn't find anything. Maybe someone else will have better luck.

Well here's a couple of antstudios:

http://bing.search.sympatico.ca/?q=ant% ... Lang=en-CA

http://bing.search.sympatico.ca/?q=ant% ... Lang=en-CA

Neither appear to have anything to do with karaoke.

And trill inc.:

http://bing.search.sympatico.ca/?q=ant% ... Lang=en-CA

Also has nothing to do with karaoke.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

Fred,

Do what you want when making purchases. Your moral and economic criteria are contrived and unrealistic for my way of doing business.

I have purchased hundreds of dollars of discs in the last 6 weeks.

I just received 18 SC discs, each with 8 karaoke and 8 vocal tracks, for $49 dollars delivered. That comes out to $.30 per karaoke track FAR FROM A DOLLAR PER TRACK. They must be illegal and I better return them immediately. Has anyone heard of Sound Choice? I found a web site for them but every search I put in for the tracks I am looking for come up with -0-. Obviously something fishy going on with that company.

Oh, and then there are the 25 Legends discs that I purchased for $60 delivered, each with at least 15 tracks. So I got over 375 tracks at $0.16 per track. Absolutely impossible for Legends to produce those tracks and make a profit at that price. Who is Legends, anyway? Their stuff seems real good for the price!

And then there are the SCDG's of the CB Essential Vol 1-4, 2700 tracks for $110. Lone wolf got them for $69. At $69 that comes out to $0.026. Hell, you can't even press the discs for that amount of money!

And let's not talk about the discs Birdofsong is selling. I picked up 7 of those for a "song". Pardon the expression.

And let's not forget all of the discs I have picked up for a $1 or two.

In one instance, I bid $.01 on two CB disc and won the auction. It cost me $.01 plus $4.98 in shipping for those beauties! They surely must be counterfeit but I just can't see the evidence to prove that. Why was I the only bid? Hmm. I must have been the only one foolish enough to accept the possibility that I was getting a legitimate, legal, follow the law to the letter product in those two discs. Well, maybe they didn't follow the law. What do I know and how would I know?

The sound choice 8+8 only have to pay royalties for 8 tracks. That is why they are a lot less than some of the others out there with 15 different songs.

As for disks sure a lot of times you can find them for discount very cheap used or clearance. That does not change the fact that the release price for those disks you purchased is usually far more than what you paid.

As for some of the other disks they could be illegal as well there are a lot of illegal copies of SC and other disks for sale out there.

now that would have to be illegal.

And if you cant realize that you bought the CB disks for $5 each not $0.01, you really dont understand marketing.

Now most of the ones you listed may or may not be legal but are not as big a red flag as the ad that started this (except the insanely cheap SCDGs).

You can blisfully pretend that you are always buying legit products but the world is not a nice place. Be honest to yourself even if you dont admit it here on the forum.

Why not just stop pretending and buy a $300 hard drive with 2 million songs. Ask the seller if it is legit first if that makes you feel better. Dont pretend to yourself that you are on a much higher plane than those KJs if you buy sets like the one at the start of the thread.

Nothing I saw would make me think it was a legal company to buy from.

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