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If someone wanted to start KJ'ing what would you tell them would be a must have in their music library?

Essentials, Foundations/Bricks/Mortars, is there a list of top 500 most requested songs?

Depends on the area--if it were me, and I had to start over knowing what our people ended up singing I would have gotten SC Foundation I and II, some of the CB Classic Country sets, some of the CB artist sets like 50 by Johnny Cash, etc., the CB One Hit Wonder sets. Then I would get either a best of Pop, best of Country or latest Essential set for the most recent year, just to cover new things people might want. Makes you look up to date to have some new stuff. Some essential fill-ins would be an Eagles Disc (we had Zoom but now the SC songs are back on custom) and a Cher disc. And Shania Twain.

New country that is popular in our area includes Zac Brown, Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood plus we have a contingent of Martina McBride worshipers. New pop is harder to call--more by individual song than artist although Nickelback is pretty popular. The 90s rock on our SGB set is in great demand so if I could have had a lot of that covered by SC Foundation II then it would have been better than replacing things bit by bit but that's a hindsight is 20/20 thing.

If I was on a budget I would get the Foundations, some CB country compilations and then put out a request list.

Someone else's area may require entirely different types of music but that would be ours.

I would always start out with a good basic core like the Foundations & Bricks. But after that is completely dependant on area, clientelle and other factors. What is required at one show, may be completely dead next door and another song is king that is dead at the first show.
Here is a top 500 of all time - although looking at it, it would be completely off for many of the songs in our shows.
http://www.uskaraokealliance.com/Top500 ... lTime.html

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Thanks leopard lizard and Lonman. I should have stated that I know that location and age would play a factor, but was looking at pretty much an all around library.

Someone mentioned on another thread that they thought they could actually get away with a library of about 2500 so it got me to thinking and wondering what you guys/gals thought would be a must have.

Again, his 2500 songs may be completely different than mine. I couldn't honestly say what is a must have because chances are they would not be match for another show. Top 5 that probably get sung at my shows almost any given night
ROCK:
Walk - Pantera
Bodies - Drowning Pool
I Am The Highway - Audioslave
Driven Under - Seether
Blue Jeans & A Rosary - Kid Rock
COUNTRY:
Carrie Underwood
Taylor Swift
Sugarland
Keith Urban
Lady Antebellum

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the songs and artists that Lonman listed light right up with my experience.

The SC bricks and foundations a MUST. Every show I use many songs that begin with SC75xx, and I can assure you, those will get used again and again.

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

The Top 500 list is very city-oriented. When you get to the Midwest, there is a lot more country sung.

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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.

MOst of the Foundations and bricks are available in the GEM series. Personally I could see me if all my cd+g's ever get stolen and all I had left was my GEM series being able to continue just with those discs.

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

Just out of curiosity are there any dups in the foundation/brick sets?
Pretty sure the Gem Series is 6,000 songs with no dups.


Since May of last year I've managed to put together about 3400 songs, but have about 500 dups.

No


That seems pretty high. Just be careful when buying new music & cross check with what you already have, then weigh if you really need to buy a full disc for 1 or 2 songs when the rest are repeats, could be cheaper to put together a custom disc with just songs you need & do not have.

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Yeah that's a dup about every 7 songs. The good thing is I have less than $700 invested in my current library. Craigslist has been a pretty good source. I realize I'm going to end up with quite a few dups this way, but so far not counting dups I'm at about $.25 a track.

So far I have Chartbusters' :
Essentials 1-3
Essential Plus Teen Pop 1 & 2
Essential Plus 80's Pop
Essential Plus 90's Pop
Essential Plus 90's Country
2010 Top 100 Country Hits

and various SC, CB, THM and other manu cdg's.

I've been very lucky. I have bought a lot of bulk purchases which means a high % of duplicates. I have over 19,000 songs counting dupes. Not counting dupes I have over 10,000. But by buying bulk, I've put my libary together at a low cost. Except for SC8125 which I just bought. For the right price, I don't mind dupes as fastTracks will print out my book and not show dupes as long as everything is spelled the same.

I am at the point now of just trying to keep up with newly released songs so now the days of low priced CDGs are over for me!

I'd like to look into the Chartbuster new releases, I've been buying PHM which now come out on MPG so you don't have to rip them. I can usually buy the newest one on eBay for $44 which is 27 songs in 3 genres.

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KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

I use the Foundations/Bricks a lot, too. So definitely a good investment. I also buy a lot of Lots on ebay. You can get some good deals on them. If there's one or two duplicate you can always re-list them on ebay and get rid of them.

EDIT: Regarding duplicates... Even though I buy disks primary because of my KJ job, I became more of a collector over the years. So I do have many duplicates, but I just can't stop.

Speaking of... Lonman! ... Actually, I put this in a new thread. Don't wanna hijack this one.

I've got the SC Foundations and Bricks and added the SAV country, the Dangerous Collection, the Karaoke Hits, the All Hits 8000 series, the Pop HIts 90s and Millenium collection and a few CB essentials as the core of my library.

I've bought a lot of PHM over the last few years when I could find them on clearance, but the quality really seems to have nose-dived to me in the last few years. Anybody else feel that way?

I have a few Dupes as well, but out of 19000 total tracks, only 2000 are dupes.

but then again, I purchesed a used KJ library when i started, and have been very selective about what I buy.

At this point, my music investment is a fraction of what it use to be. I pick up "must haves" individually from Tricerasoft, and then buy in bulk at the end of the year, when the annual compilations come out.

In my books, and don't list dupes, Manus, or disk numbers. The song and the artist. mostly, people don't know what SC, or CB means anyway, and if they do they will request it. Saves a lot of time went I just go ahead and "pick the best version"

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

Favorite is SC 8147, Why Don't We Get Drunk And Sing, the hits of Jimmy Buffett.

This would be a perfect example, I have this disc and it rarely gets touched. Maybe 2 or 3 times a year.

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What? You don't still hear, "Margaritaville" every single show?

Well, we still get that one and sometimes "Cheeseburger." "Volcano" is another and very rarely "Pencil Thin Mustache" and sometimes, "Come Monday." I would do them all but I'm a female and I have to up or down them to the point of distortion to get them in my range. But I do "Volcano" regularly and sometimes "Fins." Have yet to have anyone do "Why Don't We Get Drunk" whcih is surprising.

The only time Margaritaville gets done is if my voice is shot, this is one of the only songs I can pull through without straining, otherwise no it doesn't get done much at all. The only one that gets done on rare occasion is Juicy Fruit & Cheesburger.

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i cant remember the last time Cheeseburger was done, but i get Come Monday almost Weekly. it is amazing the diversity at times.

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens