Karaoke Forums

Singers are now so overwhelmed with piracy as well as illegal computerized companies and have no clue why it's so bad.
Here are some reasons why it's bad:
1- Nobody looks up their songs anymore cause all the computerized host does it for them.
This keeps them from trying new songs cause they just run up to the host and head outside for a smoke.
No respect for others.
2- Multi-Riggers,(those who uses duplicated copies of hard drives to run many other shows), they are taking gigs away from honest hosts as well as defrauding all of us who actually pays the royalties for their music.
3- Piracy actually puts bar owners at risk for lawsuits, cause most lawsuits are aim at the "deep pockets".
4- Almost every pirateer KJ is usually far less experienced and have no real investment thus no care in how things run.


I know it's blah blah blah, but people who don't give a damn about our industry don't see that the cost of business is unfairly skewed to those who do it illegally.
Our society accepts those who do things that are illegal as well as immoral.

"SUPPORT YOUR LEGITIMATE KJ"
Look at all the winners of past host and venues and see who are pirateers?
Stop voting for these pirates and their establisments

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Karaoke is supposed to be fun, if it isn't, then it's NOT KARAOKE.......

Amen.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

Yes I agree, on all, except #4. Not all Pirates are bad KJs and/or run bad shows. My one competitor left in the area is a multi-rigger (5 systems) and has a 80K+ song selection. He has been in the business around 20 years and most of his employees run great shows.


Yeah, he is pond scum, but still has a really good show and a great following.

Oh yeah, I don't agree with #1 either. The song that I have added since my last book printing are all in one "NEW SONG" book. Sometimes it doesn't make it around the bar very far. I have a lot of people come up and ask do you have the new "Artist" song. I look it up, I have it, and put it in for them. Make my life and the singers easier.

Well agree more & more people just ask the kj for the song, but i'll always keep my book updated for those who actually do look. Looking into a kiosk program now - Chip have a demo?

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I couldn't more!!!!!!!

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No venue to big or too small. From your den to the local club or event, we have the music most requested. Great sounding system!

*steps briefly from the shadows*

Just a question about point 1. I can not for the life of me understand why people complain because a host doesn't make the singers look up their own songs? Really, who cares? How is this "bad"?

Its sooo much easier on me if they just come up and tell me their name and the song. Compuhost has "search as you type" so I can find most songs with just a few letters... such as "coe name". Done. No wasted paper, and its takes me 5 seconds.

Does it make it harder on my competition because my singers might expect the same convenience at other shows?

Sorry, but I don't feel bad about that one bit. *scratches head, steps back into the shadows*

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

How would I know which past winners are pirates or not?

Now I'm interested.

Mark

No, we don't have a demo... but we can assure you that it works quite well...

(it is NOT, however supported for Window 7 or Vista in 64-bit mode for the receiver program that sits on the hosting machine)

For security purposes, the software runs on a dongle.... that way it can't be used as the latest "shareware" on the net...

And it really doesn't matter what hosting program you use as long as you can produce an Excel .csv file that contains the song number, song title, artist name, and disk ID.

I don't have a problem with someone that purchases the program and then, if they decide within 30 days to return the dongle (and it's not broken and still readable) I'll refund their money. So there's a demo for you.

Do keep in mind that the songfinder software is specifically designed to run on OLDER computers... the kind you will find at a garage sale for just a few dollars. I just picked up a Presario laptop for $50 that has a dead keyboard. No Problem! I plugged in a USB keyboard and configured it for a touchscreen monitor... it works great and I don't need a keyboard anyway.

I do NOT recommend any KJ putting any high-powered computer in a kiosk... it isn't worth it and it doesn't make anything really run any faster. Kiosk programs like this send so little data back and forth that it's overkill.

My main kiosk is a Win '98 Pentium 166 with a 3 gb hard drive.

BTW, You can demo this yourself in "touchscreen mode" with a standard monitor.... just put the keyboard away and use the mouse only. You'll have the same effect, execept instead of using your finger, you use the mouse...

I run on disc and about 30% of my singers are unable to/refuse to use books. Looking up their songs takes no time at all for me (since I know what I own and within reason what disc it's on). The problem is their drunken stumbles to talk to me, often walking in front of the person singing and blocking the screen and their inability to know what they actually want to sing. e.g. "that one that was on that TV show that the other band done". The slip writers in my experience, have a greater respect for karaoke and keep the show flowing.

I miss the days where everyone expected singers to write out slips, I get compliments because we run a fast rotation. . . but it was faster when I didn't have to restart a song because (for example) the levels weren't correct as I was too busy trying to help a customer remember the "number 1 song that went da da de de da".

I have noticed that the computerized hosts without books do tend cause customers to only sing the same few songs. I also hate hosts without a book who claim to have nearly everything, lets face it they probably don't and I find it embarassing to stand next to them asking for songs they don't have.

KJ's who claim to have "everything" make me laugh. They claim that they don't need song books anymore because they have every karaoke song ever made. The problem is that they have so many songs that printing out song books has become cost prohibitive. I miss the days of perusing a song book and stumbling across a song title that I would have never thought of singing if I hadn't seen it in the song book while casually glancing through it. Now the KJ's expect the karaoke singer to have KJ Pro memorized. I go to one show where the song book has about 3,000 songs in it but the KJ has 100,000 on her hard drive. Nothing new in the song book for the last 3 or 4 years but she can play it for you if you know enough to ask her for it.

I find it hard to call it a "problem" that singers no longer have to write a long CD code and track code (which many will get wrong or write illegibly), with the introduction of computer based karaoke.

The advantage of computers is that it makes the life of the KJ easier, and they no longer have to spend as much time sorting disks. That time can go to making the show better, announcing, optimizing sound, interacting with singers etc.

In general it makes the Karaoke experience better. Sure it points out shows that use old technology (disks) and are slower to respond to the needs of the singers. But on balance I find it relly hard to call this a negative thing for karaoke. (except the ease of piracy).

As for piracy, recordable cds were <1$ almost 10 years ago and many of the disk based shows I know of use pirated (home copied) disks, so little change their either. Most of those were multi-riggers, and the KJs that were actually running the shows were as low skilled as any pirate today, most were just warm bodies who could run a cd changer. If anything the computer advent has increased the number of independent (and legit) Kj that I know of (as well as increased the pirate ones), largely at the expense of the multi-riggers (who were the old pirates in my area).

It is a sign of a lazy KJ that a book is extremely out of date (or fear of advertizing pirated songs). But that has little to do with tech improvements. It is mainly the fact that a song book of >20k or more songs is really impractical due to size.

Even the honest KJS who have 5000-10000 or more songs on a computer have advantage over a disk based system because of the space and organizational need to catalog/sort 500-1000 disks.

Space is a huge issue for those still on discs, but then my rig is quite large even if i went to computer I still clutter up my work area (I'd still have a back up CD player and CDG player anyway). My track codes are easy to use eg: 34 / 11, though I'd like to move onto a kiosk so that singers can find the disc brand (not that any of my singers know the difference )

The only way I'm slower is because of the 10sec silence before most tracks, but few singers can get to the stage in that time. I'm anti computer because the computer hosts in my area, use a lot of filler music rather than the fast paced non stop karaoke I prefer and on the few computer systems I have hosted with ALL have crashed.

I am looking to move to computer in the long run, (after all a good system won't crash and if it does a good host will have a back up plan) but the licensing law in the uk doesn't cover us. Until that day I'll be spinning the discs.

On a side note how does everyone cope with book size? Mine are about to burst at the seams and I'm only up to 6500 songs with no dupes.

Re the how do you know you are supporting a pirate show: That is a good question as far as the singers go. I don't know how a singer who isn't on forums all the time would even know about pirating. As a KJ, you can answer questions about why you haven't downloaded for free every song in the universe but you look bad out and out accusing the competition. And the answer from the singer when you explain about piracy is likely to be along the lines of, "Who cares--the music industry is a rip-off, anyway," etc. etc. etc.

I have thought of having a frontpiece in the book that says, "We practice sustainable Karaoke. Please support the shows that support the karaoke manufacturers," but don't know if anyone would read or care.

As for hosts, we tend to know who the pirates are because they come to our shows trying to get us to join file sharing sites or bragging that they got their music for free and we are suckers, etc. I don't think I've ever met a modest pirate. I had one guy tell me that he wasn't worried about the Sound Choice suits because he had never heard of any one being sued in 20 years of doing karaoke and Sound Choice was going out of business, anyway. Brag on, buddy, brag on.

Never had this problem when I was disc based. Always had two players, so while song one is playing, the other is cued up with the next singer. You pull a disc, open it up, load it, hit the number & push pause. Takes about 5-10 seconds MAX. Of course you doo all that once the singer starts singing as to adjust the sound. Another 10 seconds max (usually). But I always used jewel cases & everything was always available easily and quickly, no having to flip pages to find the disc or remember which book it was in. The computer hasn't made my shows any better nor faster (actually slowed it down a little), just more convenient.

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This is the only thing that slowed me down as well, when I ran discs I had the next song cued up to where the music started.
As far as computers crashing, it's going to happen, but have a nice computer built with quality components and this will help minimize that problem. I have an occasional program glitch where I need to restart the program, but I equate that to the occasional disc skip.


I am at around 12K non dup'd songs. The titlel books are in 2" binders, the artist books are in 2 1/1" binders. Double columned pages and printed double sided.

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

An organized host with dics is no slower than a host with a computer. Our discs are in "File boxes" (check my album) and doubles as work areas.

As for books, we divide them into Artist and Title books, then further divide them onto "A-L" and "L-Z with new arrivals", again can be seen in my album.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

Let me rephrase, the disk is not going to make a slower show, just take less time for the KJ to get ready (and this is when a prior song is usually in play). Yes it may only be a few seconds more a song, but that adds up through the night.

I don't see how even a well organized disk based host can find the right disk insert it into the player and return the previous disk to storage in the time it takes to find a song on compuhost and add it to the playlist.

That time saved ( again when the prior song is usually being played) is time that can be spent getting the crowd involved in the show or other KJ stuff.

I like a fast show, with no filler music and quick turn around between singers. For my shows a 20 second turn around is what I consider slow. Many are less.

Before I computerized, I would pull the disc as soon as the slip was presented. Had a long table. Gave me time to check and confirm the song, etc. Two trays, one in, one out....all night long. Might be 20 discs out at a time. Once the song was playing, I slid the previous one in the rack. Not slow at all. People tease me about how fast I run a show, even when it's early and I'm working with 6 to 10 people. I'm just glad I don't have to do that anymore. Hoster is so much nicer.

The venues have PRS, and,as a computerised DJ/KJ, I have a ProDub license with Karaoke pickup. That makes me legal...though not many in the UK bother with this