Karaoke Forums

Does anyone know the approximate number of how many karaoke songs are out there (excluding foreign language/home made/etc.)? Someone is advertising over 100,000 songs. Yeah, maybe with all the duplicates....

There is really nothing to go on. I know a few years back Sound Choice had stated that had made almost 16,000 individual tracks at one point. With the overseas manus now spitting out songs that have never been available, I would guess that with every manu past/present, the number could be up around 50K.

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Those guys that advertise 100,000 songs are #1 very illegal. #2, a good number of those songs often include foreign language songs - Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Philipeno, German, Russian, whatever.

Don't buy the hype!! I have a legal library of about 13,000 songs, and according to my CompuHost history, only 483 individual songs were picked in the last 365 days by 1013 individual singers.

So who cares if I have 13,000 songs to choose from, everyone still picked only a select few. That means that most anyone could probably have a WELL SELECTED list of about 1000-2000 songs and realistically serve the needs of their karaoke singers. Of course perception sometimes becomes reality, which is why there are pirate karaoke hosts with 100,000 songs.

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C Mc
KJ, FL

Not everyone with a library of that size is illegal.

There is a venue in Anchorage, Alaska (Al's Alaska Inn) that has one of the largest libraries I've ever seen. They still play laserdiscs, and pretty much every karaoke disc I've been able to think of - they had. It was a HUGE rack of discs that went around the booth. Yes - the show was still on discs. I was told they buy pretty much every discs that comes out and update the books twice a year. They're printed on a 'sealed' paper that resist tearing and having liquid dumped on them.

BTW, The book was spiral bound, small print, and was over 250 pages (they were nearly an 1" thick).

The sad thing is the hosts seemed to:

1. Run lousy sound. I should NOT sound like I'm singing into a canyon because of the echo effect which they cranked up.

2. Want to 'step in' on the more difficult parts and 'help out' - even if they didn't know you could pull them off. Personally, I find that incredibly annoying....

That's why I went there a couple times and then left for another place or two down the street with a MUCH smaller song selection, but better sound.

Admittedly, it's been about 5 years since I was there...

A person on another forum took KJPRO and put every disc available into a book and whittled out the dupes came up with just under 40,000 songs. That doesn't includee the songs from downloading sites like SBI and Karaoke Version.

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I agree to a point, but i've been doing this since 89 - when only about 600 songs were available on Pioneer (ok DK hadn't made it's way up here until a few years later. Even then, you could have about 250-350 songs regularly. As new discs, and new music comes out, numbers stay the same per week, but different titles start to replace older titles and become in the new 'regular' selection for a while & so on. So what was carefully chosen say even 10 years ago (and i've seen some kj's that still run a selection like this today), might be drastically out dated today.
I don't think any kj has to buy every disc and song available that would just be costly, but still should cator to the crowds you play to as far as getting certain requests.

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My best estimate from working a lot with databases (Karaoke Book Deluxe+ SBI downloads) is that there are about 35,000 unique songs (artist+title) in English from these 2 sources (out of about 333,000 songs, counting disk+tracknumber). It is not an easy question as getting the names to match for the same song is not easy.

From other sources the number may push up to near 40,000 in English but you would have to look VERY hard to find them all. I suspect that there may be another 10k or so non commercial custom songs out there are as well. The additional 5,000 may be from several hundred different sources.

The diversity of songs actually sung can vary a lot from show to show. In about the last 50 shows with 3800 songs sung I had 1800 different songs sung from my songbook of about 10,000 unique songs.

Going outside of the English language I have no real count, but I suspect that there may be far more non-english than english songs. Many of the limitations on songs are due to legal reasons in the US, and laws in other countries and languages may be fare more relaxed in fact or practice.

I was really expecting to see a comment from jdmeister after reading this part. Kinda a let down.

Good question though. Its suprising of the duplicates in my modest collection as a singer of only of 30 -40 discs, same genre'. And some are in the same series / group / set. Sorry loss for words right now.

Are you kidding me? EVERYONE with 100,000 songs is illegal.

100,000 songs/15 songs per disc average (conservatively, I think it is closer to 12) = 6,667 discs.

6,667 discs x $8.00 per disc average (again, pretty conservative) = $53, 336.00.

NO ONE in this entire known universe is stupid enough to spend $53K on karaoke discs, assuming there are even 6667 discs manufactured!

Also, a rack of 6667 discs would take up about 5 tables of space. I have 890 discs, and that takes up a 2.5 foot x 6 inch x 1.5 foot case and weighs about 35 pounds. Multiply that by 7.5 (6667/890), and 6667 discs would take up 18.75 feet x 3.75 feet x 11.25 feet of space and weigh about 265 pounds WITHOUT jewel cases.

EVERYONE with 100,000 songs is illegal.

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C Mc
KJ, FL

Yes, but just how much does an MP3+G weigh anyway?

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NW Ohio Karaoke

I won't say everyone with 100,000 songs is illegal.. but i'd bet most of them are.

I'm of the opinion that it's QUALITY not QUANTITY that makes the difference in this biz.

Getting the highest number of unique songs is kind of like the shotgun effect.. the more pellets you blast at your target the more likely you are to hit it.

When I first started I scored a milk crate full of pioneer laserdiscs, then got a CDG player and the Sweet Georgia Brown collection, then just started buying discs that had the songs people would ask for that I was missing.

"Hey.. do you have Eric Claptons version of I shot the Sheriff?"

If I didn't, i'd find a disc that did and buy it.

Then i'd occasionally find a disc that had a requested song in a collection or series of discs.. and if I had the extra $$, i'd buy the collection.

It's a long, slow, road.. but at the end of the year, i'm really not doing anything but spinning the same 200 or so songs.

Sure new songs come out and join the 'over sung karaoke song' list.. like Kid Rock & Sheryl Crow 'Picture'.. but i'd bet most of us who have been at a venue for more than a few months could probably do that gig with a collection of less than 100 songs.

I've never had anyone ask to sing Los Lobos We Belong Together or The Lost Trailers We Belong Together. Not even sure who Lene Lovich is, but i've got his song Lucky Number. It's on SunFly 109, track 15. And nobody sings that, either.

The only time it's handy to have the proverbial wide net is when you go to a new venue, and you're not really sure what people are going to ask for.

Who knows.. maybe one day i'll hear someone sing Crime Mob's 'Rock Yo Hips' from the Pop Hits Urban collection.

But I doubt it.

The collection belonged to the BAR. Not to one person but the BAR. That collection is LEGAL. I saw the discs myself. I saw the laser discs and I saw them used. They had rack after rack of discs in that DJ booth, including the laserdiscs in racks under the equipment. They were using Pioneer Laser discs players as well as a couple other players. And this was 5 years ago. I checked for obscure discs that had been long out of print, and they had them.

I wouldn't have been surprised if they just ordered discs every month when SoundChoice/Chartbuster/other Manufacturers put them out. You can get on an 'autofeed' from a number of stores that sell discs. If they did this early on it would be easy to build a library of that size.

While they didn't have a huge sign with the number of songs, if they didn't have 100,000 tracks, they were close. VERY close.

You obviously don't know Debra Lewis. She has over 100,000 songs - original disc based - over 2 years ago. And close to that with a completely separate set of originals in her 2nd rig.
Not very common, but yes can be possible.

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BTW, Lene Lovich is a female singer.

"Picture" gets waaaay oversung here in the St. Louis area too. 90% of the time if a guy and girl get up to do a duet, that's the song they do. I try to pick songs that aren't that common. If I want to sing something that a lot of people sing, I usually do it early in the evening before anyone else can get to it.

Lene Lovich is a girl, and I have heard her song "Lucky Number". It's been a long time since I've heard it, but maybe I should look it up on YouTube and listen to it again to see if it's something that I could sing or would want to sing. I don't recognize the other songs you listed. I like what I've heard from Los Lobos, but I haven't heard "We Belong Together" yet.

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I actually have had someone sing Lene Lovich, and he was sooooo excited to see it there! Only once but it's kept that guy coming back for years!