Karaoke Forums

I just took on a task that I may soon regret.

There used to be a website that listed every karaoke venue in the Milwaukee area. Since I am a KJ in Milwaukee and am always looking for some place to sing, that was great. Unfortunately, the site was not kept up to date and eventually it went away.

This weekend, I dug around and made up a long list of every place that has karaoke in the area. Then I posted this list on my website, over 100 listings so far. I am contacting as many karaoke aficionados and KJs as I can to verify the listings and add venues. If I keep this up, I will contact the clubs as well.


Has anyone else done this for their area? Have I taken on a ridiculously difficult and thankless task!??!?! Go ahead... you have permission to tell me I'm crazy.

Revelator

I used to do that on the JOLT Forum (at least in the "Where to Sing:NY" section). I used to try and list as many shows as I was aware of in the NYC area. I used to go in and try to review/update whatever I listed every 6 months or so. It was a very difficult/tedious task.... as I would have to call up the different venues on multiple days of the week (because some of the staff either didn't know or didn't care) to verify if they still had Karaoke (and who was hosting it). There was also another website that I knew of that listed multiplke shows in NYC, but they never maintined/updated the listings.

Go here: http://karaokejunkies.ning.com/ and message Becstra. She built and manages two karaoke listing sites. One local for Richmond, and one intended as a national database.

She might be able to advise you.

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Dave's not here.

I have been all across the country and seen a lot of them. Most of them fall upon hard times because they are not kept up to date. The biggest problem is actually that gigs go away but the listing doesn't. So I have learned to call ahead.

The biggest problem is singer interest. If you can get people to use it and vet the entries, they work pretty good. The only ones I have seen that were really good are the one in Seattle, the one at Cocoa Beach/Space Coast, and the one in Philadelphia. The rest are either hard to find or not up to date.

Ideally hosts would post their own, but most are extremely bad at that. I thought it would be nice to have a deal with email reminders, but the amount of interest in my area has been underwhelming to say the least.

I have twice volunteered to take over the one here, with no response. This site would be an *excellent* place to have a national one, with all of the traffic and interested people. But if the powers that be won't let it happen, there is nothing I can do.

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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've said this before, and I'll repeat it....


The main problem with getting a site that lists Karaoke shows in a specific State/City/Region/etc... is, the site is only as good as the people who know how to search for it. If you don't know what you're looking for, then you're probably not going to find it. Another problem with this is for people who are taking a vacation and they don't know the names of the neighboring cities (this goes back to my previous sentence).

The second problem with sites like these, many don't update them. Yeah.... It's all fine and dandy that KJs can come in and enter their show information, but more often than not, they don't remove it (or request that the information be deleted) when the show is cancelled.

When I used to try and keep on top of what I listed in the JOLT Forum, I used to add other information besides the night and hours of the show and the name of the KJ hosting. I had little tidbits like... "Kitchen is open until ...." and "KJ does/does not accept personal discs" and "drinks are over-priced" and "Other attractions/distractions: Pool Table, Dart Board, Video machines, etc..."

That's why I'd spend the $10 to put your listings on a separate domain like MilwaukeeKaraoke.org. If you already have a website, most hosts allow you to put up to 50 domain names on the same account.

People searching for "milwaukee karaoke" are more likely to come upon a site with those terms in the domain name.

It's a ton of work, but the best part is if it takes off you can sell advertising space on it! Good luck.

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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]

....I would bet that any comprehensive listing of karaoke venues on this site would be used by SoundChoice as their go-to list for litigation.

The CEO of SoundChoice has even admitted on this site that they are basically accusing first, sorting out the facts later, meaning they will sue you first THEN sort out if you've done anything illegal after the fact.

Good luck with that list!

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C Mc
KJ, FL

If you are 100% legal you have nothing to fear. I wouldn't mind having legal hosts listed, so I could patronize them. I have found they tend to be the most competent and have the best shows.

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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.

Why thank you, Mick!

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

The KJ listing can be foiund

here: http://www.karaokescene.com/kj_directory/index.php

Yes, one in my state.

The club directory is worse than worthless. You go to a state, select a city, and 9 times out of 10 it returns "There were zero matches".

It's a complete waste of time. I could easily fix what is there, or we could embed something decent. But no one is interested.

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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.

There's one for the suburbs of Chicago, (mostly the Northwest burbs I believe ). NiteLife. org. It used to be better when it had a sub site to this one (karaokeNiteLife ) but it's basically the same. This is how we generally pick a place to go out. 4 of the 5 places I frequent got me in the door because I found them on this site. Otherwise I may not have ever gone in these joints. Not completely accurate, but a pretty good start and you can normally at least get a # to call and ask. I check it out all the time. As I said, it needs revamping and there's a whole bunch of places not on there as well, but it's a good start. Milwaukee isn't that far for me.

Yes, I own the domain Karaokepittsburgh.com

I no longer maintain the site and I am changing the site to be my karaoke business' web site.

A guy in Austin has his austinsings.com that covers the hill country. It is even sponsored by some KJs to promote their shows. Not a bad site, and even a forum there too (with little posters)