Karaoke Forums

Thinking about this whole audit thing.... (seeing as this thread has already started to turn)

If you are a food vendor and sell Coca-Cola in bottles / cans etc, you sell as you see fit. If you are using post-mix syrup, Coke will occasionally come along and audit your dispensers.

I know, not exactly the same but not completely different either. If you sell post mix drinks (use MP3+G GEM series) then you agree to an audit. Now if you only sell bottles and cans (use CDGs either as disc or format shift) then you don't expressly agree but that doesn't stop Coke from coming along and auditing your stock to defend its brand. The most cost effective way to do this is bulk suing to force all the investigative effort back onto the sellers. Just like The Copyright Foundation is doing with all the indie movie downloads.

Many industries have some form of government regulation, it could be argued that Sound Choice is doing some self regulation.

I also wonder if someone from Sound Choice contacted you/me out of the blue and asked to audit your rig (no lawsuit first) would we agree or would we say 'go get a court order.'

Now back on topic.....

Has anyone cross referenced the entire GEM tracklist with all Foundations, Bricks and Spotlights to see which songs came from where? I'd like to but I'm just not ready to invest that time which could be spent doing something more productive (like sleeping)

- Jonn

Looks like around 2500 songs out of the 6000 that I don't have (taking into account an estimated 300 or so naming differences)

That doesn't include comparing whether I'm replacing non SC versions or whether I only have the song on 1 rig.

Big question is (as always) how many of these songs would actually get sung?

Assuming I pick up just one set and put it all in one rig I would then shift most SC CDG discs from that rig over to the other rig (albeit checking each one to determine if there are some songs needed on that rig that are not in the GEMs)

As all have said these GEMs are:

i) For legal KJs looking to expand to another rig
ii) A way for SC to make the songs available as part of their audit settlements
iii) A way for SC to make more money without much real new work

As for downloads? Well if SC sold their catalog to Stingray Digital (who already run downloads) there would be a bit of licensing fun between them. Could custom discs come back in MP3+G form? Could individual downloads become available? My guess is that Stingray is now in the equation as the owners of the catalog.

Another question is whether these will be the original CDG files on the GEMs or the slightly blockier font used on Karaoke Channel MP3+Gs and newer Sound Choice CDGs. Not really an important question, more of a geek one!

- Jonn

My assessment of a test 100 songs was that I already had 70 of them from a SC disk.

Therefore the net gain would only be 1800 songs for me, of which maybe 50% I have from other manus.

Again the point is, SC has a established group of loyal customers who have spent a lot of mony on SC songs in the past. This benefits them very little, on the other hand they have a POSSIBLE market that they are selling a product to FAR cheaper than what their loyal customers have paid in the past. Personally I dont think that this market will be very profitable.

The pirates have 18,000 SC songs for nearly free now, why would they spend 4500 for 6000 songs, and be forced to discard 12000. Yes it provides an easy mechanism for SC to force people who are settleing when the sue, but that is a very cynical depressing business model.

The only real benefit of this to me is that some second hand SC disks might make it on to E-bay at lower prices than previously (especially out of print hard to find ones).

Well it is benefiting me as I found out the hard way that my originals for my main system went missing in action so to become legal again I had to rip my rental system which only had a core set of 2411 songs. I plan on getting the emeralds and the saffires to augment my collection.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

I have a whole host of disks but if I were to get an opportunity to setup another rig for the same night and have someone run it I would happily buy the MP3+G versions rather than go through the disk storage issues.

Staying 1:1 with SC stuff just got easier. If they provided a place to download it with a service similar to iTunes I'd happily pay SC a reasonable license per year to have access to everything they produce.

A little off-topic, but if anyone is interested in an SC-8125 Knightshow's widow is looking to sell one. I believe she wants $200 for it which is less than Matt paid for it.

Here is a PDF file of the entire GEM series sorted by Artist so you can see what's available from who:

http://dkusa.com/GemArtists.pdf

I am all for soundchoice opening up their custom operation again. My guess is that they couldn't afford to keep it running, even in australia.

The thing about downloads is until the music industry allows the karaoke companies to grant an end user liscense, it will always be a grey area.

No one can GARUNTEE that the copyright holder for the COMPOSITION won't come after you for using the graphic portion of a karaoke track.

Mind vou, i PERSONALLy don't care and I will use all of my downloads that I paid for, until some legal authority tells me I can't..

The simplest solution would be to grant the same thing that the UK has. It's called a ProDub liscense and gives you the right to tranfer all vour DJ AND KARAOKE tracks to computer.

I would pay for that in a HEARTBEAT to end all this stupid debate on what is legal and what isn't..


-James

Thing is now if you save the SC Safe Harbor site to your computer for safe keeping while possessing all the original discs rather than one that just bought a hard drive off of ebay that could not produce even one disc..

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Please correct me if I'm wrong but - as I understand it, when I buy the Gem, Diamond and/or Sapphire series I will be getting it in a cdg format (30 songs per cdg) ripped at 320 kbps, thus mp3g files.

Then you can rip / transfer to your hardrive (1:1 ratio) which is a time consuming process especially for non-techies like me that don't know how to do it. I am one of those KJ's still lugging my cds in a binder all 1,800 cds and about 50 percent are SC discs. By the way about 5 percent of my SC discs are no longer playable due to some pinholes. I read somewhere that on or about the late 80's SC bought a lot of low quality blank CD's and those pinholes are due to degradation. I had some replaced from SC for just the cost of shipping, the discontinued ones I am Sh-Out-O-luck.

Anyway, wouldn't it be nice if you can buy these songs from SC already loaded in an external hardrive. Well, then there's no 1:1 ratio you say? But if you purchased it from SC, you are legit and you have the receipt to prove it. That will even eliminate and prevent others from using the original cds for a 2nd rig (at their own risk of course). I wouldn't mind paying $3 or $4K's for this kind of convenience. Hmmmm... Just wonderin'....

They will not be CDG discs, they will be CDRs with MP3+G files.



All you do is DRAG or copy and paste the folder to your computer, no real TECKNOWLEDGE required. They are already MP3+G files.

Thanks Manobeer! I will try that.

Think of them as being "pre-ripped". You are just copying from one drive letter/folder to another the same as you would any file on your computer.