Karaoke Forums

My husband hhb119fist and I are starting our own business this summer, and one of the things I want to do is have the best selection possible for our library.
I have seen many KJ's and some of them are able to download songs to their library on the spot...I am not sure if there is a legal way to do this or not. I really would like to have the best selection of music in my area, what are your suggestions for discs and building your library.

At this time we have our own personal collection of CDG's which has about 25 discs of things that we like to sing that no DJ in our area had at the time.

As far as having the best selection, that really depends a lot on the type of venue, age demographics and a host of other factors. I highly recommend getting Sound Choice's Foundation 1 & 2 to begin with. This series covers several musical genres, and has something for every musical taste. You can add on to The Foundation with the Brick series of discs. This will give you a good base to start from, while giving you a wide variety of songs.

Chartbuster Karaoke has their Essential 450 packs. These are sets of 450 songs in different music styles.

These are a few options that you should check out. They'll give you a great start on your library, while giving your singers a nice variety.

If you want to be legal, you are going to have to spend money. You can realistically hope for the best legal collection if not the best collection. If someday the piracy hammer comes down, you should be well-positioned.

As I posted in his thread, if I had to start over again and I was in a rock-oriented area, I'd probably opt for the GEM as my base:

http://www.soundchoicestore.com/gem-ser ... pg-66.html

Then fill in other stuff with custom downloads and CB artist disks. 6000 top-quality songs costs $4480. Add another $1000.00 or so and you have a pretty recent top-quality library. You also avoid the long "ripping" process you have with disks.

If I didn't like the lease approach, or was in a heavily country area, then I would pick up Foundation I & II, then CB Essentials 3-10. That's about $2000, and gets you 4500 songs. After that, I would fill in with artist disks for country, Zoom/Sunfly/SBI downloads for recent and rock, and CB or SC customs. For $3000, I could get a pretty decent selection of songs to match the GEM. If you have a lot of country singers, Chartbuster is about as good as Sound Choice if not better for that purpose. And the GEM series is at best adequate for country selection. It skips some pretty big acts and hits in that area.

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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.

Thank you for the information, I am really not a fan of leasing music. I am however hoping for the best LEGAL library in my area. I don't want to fool around when it comes to my business.

I want a wide variety of music, not predominantly one genre and I'm interested in a "base library" although I would like to eventually have the newest music(I know this is not something that happens overnight) What are your suggestions as far as getting monthly subscriptions and expanding your library after the base is complete?

A second choice is what I got told of via email from Chartbuster. They now have 6000 songs available on 2 SD cards in MP3+G format. they use a smaller bitrate (256) compared to Sound Choice's GEM series (320). I believe there is no license agreement to purchasing this and it is not a lease. Their choice of songs are a little different than Sound Choice's set. And they don't have a financing offer.

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

I see it. A much more balanced colleciton, but the price is a bit high compared to the GEM series. I wonder if they have a "street price" on that. You could get the E1-E10 on the street for less than a third of that price, with only 1500 extra songs to add.

And it has an inexplicable lack of any Neil Diamond at all. No Eagles, of course. No Sugarland. Must be over digital licensing.

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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 purchased the Chartbuster essentials set 1-10 and most of the Essential's extras for a second system for any of the "missing artist" you can purchase a hand full of extra disc to cover those and have a really nice system.

My next purchase will be the complete GEM series.