Karaoke Forums

For the most part, I have to agree. KJ's tend to be too anal about the very minute differences in sound that singers will never notice.... Especially if they are drunk singers in a bar.

How many times have you ever forgotten/overlooked a setting (like reverb) and the singer did not even notice?

It's not really as much about sound as most would think, it is about the bar having fun.

Never claimed it can't be done. But I will claim the talent level & quality of singers WILL decline to the more stereotypical 'bad' karaoke singer. It's what you want to attract as a clientelle is where the difference lies - bad singers all night or more good singers having equally as much fun and more fun for the audience in general hearing them.

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

It's really sad you never experienced a show where 'most'of the singers were good - it can & does happen at the right places.

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

i do agree that gear is not everything. it depends on what you want from a show. my idea when starting this was to make the show i always wanted. i figured if i was annoyed by trying to sing on dog $hit systems, crappy versions of songs and hosts who are the "party", there had to be others as well. crappyoke will flourish, no matter what, there are the drunk parties who do not care and only want to sing with their beer voice, so i just cater to those who want better. just because one place sells Bentleys, will never take away from the need or want for Kia's from other drivers. that is also why "what's next" is always on my mind. where do i go from here, how can i improve, not because i must, but because if i can, why not try?

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

...in total agreement.

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I can neither confirm nor deny ever having or knowing anything about nothing.... mrscott

Maybe this is a geographical thing, but I agree 100% with this especially in my area.

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My statements, opinions and conclusions are based on my own personal experiences, observations, research and/or just my own $.02. I'm not a "cheerleader", but that doesn't make me a Pirate.

For the last 5 years or so my husbands company has had him traveling all over the US and Canada. (Thats why he has not run any shows himself lately) He (and I if I went with him) has gone to so many places to do some karaoke and he's been curious as to what those in other places use for equipment.
I can tell you he's been to some famous bars and some that if you walked out the same number of teeth you were lucky. He has not found a completly legal one yet. Either they are computer based and got their HD from someone or some of their discs are copies if they are disc based.
Some have had good equipment but had no clue had to use it. Some had the crappy stuff but could figure out to make it sound somewhat decent. Some could barely figure out how to start the next song.
The thing that made the "show" good was the host. The host's ability to play with the crowd without becoming the only thing the show was about and yet still keep people entertained.

sad but true...but I'll keep my audiophiles as happy as possible for as long as possible. BTW, I run 3 shows in a small town - all very different venues, all completely different crowds, and everyone is happy and return week after week. One venue in particular finds the bar full of people who just come to listen to the great singers. Occasionally a few of those drunken screamers will walk in and want to run the place but no can do.

There are simple ways to keep people happy - as soon as you can't figure out what those simple things are, it's time to quit...or bone up if you want to keep going.

Sorry, but I have to take exception at this:



Not all computer-based KJ's got an HD from someone else.

Same with the disc users that used burns - those could have also been backups of the originals.

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

Yep. Back in the day when I was running my shows from disks, I used Back Ups ONLY. I would have never used my originals.

Exactly

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Never the same show twice!

Come visit us in Halifax.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

I have a competitor in SJ that is doing this. I don't like it.

You can get a metro PCS windows 7 phone for $200 + $50@mo that is tether capable. Won't be the fastest, or lowest latency connection, but it's good enough to stream video (especially if you buffer your playback for a minute or two while playing bumper music)

As far as sound quality, if the video has an HD option, you can get sound at 128kbps stereo mp3 or 64kbps AAC+ stereo. So the sound quality is not bad.

Availability, you're right in that it might not be there the next day, but I'm finding for every video that gets shut down, 3 or more pop up in its place. The youtube uploaders are being sneaky about it. They're starting to use cryptic song names and cryptic user names, with only 3 or 4 videos per account. I'm starting to think that somewhere, a master list of youtube karaoke videos is being distributed.

A few weeks back I recommended to SC to stop fighting it. Why? One SC video on youtube had 300,000 views. If SC had been a youtube "Premiere Partner" they could have set the price per view for advertisers. Had they set that to $0.10 a view, it could have been $30k in their pocket for just sitting on their butts. For one song.

Right now, we all know it's totally bogus, copyrighted, no permissions granted content up there so I won't use it. I have a feeling though this might change. It's better if they get $0.10 a play, instead of nothing.

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Living my life as Robert Cortese, 162 E. Jackson St, San Jose CA.

It's like the difference between high and low budget toilet paper, it really doesn't matter in the end. -exweedfarmer

Which is smarter? Just sticking to making/selling karaoke, while people all over the world create software FOR FREE that helps you sell it, or trying to compete with them and keeping it a closed loop while you blow your money into an industry (software) that you(the karaoke manu) knows nothing about?
-me

I'm adding this to my sig and on my facebook status today. Thanks for the wisdom exweed

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Living my life as Robert Cortese, 162 E. Jackson St, San Jose CA.

It's like the difference between high and low budget toilet paper, it really doesn't matter in the end. -exweedfarmer

Which is smarter? Just sticking to making/selling karaoke, while people all over the world create software FOR FREE that helps you sell it, or trying to compete with them and keeping it a closed loop while you blow your money into an industry (software) that you(the karaoke manu) knows nothing about?
-me

I know my end can tell the difference between a single ply cheap Scott brand & a nice Northern or Charmin quilted.

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

I have to agree with Cheese on this one for my area anyway.

YEah there are some "har core" karaoke people out there, but in general, most people don't care, and most owners/managers are clueless.

For example.....
Went to my new competior's show in my town about 3 weeks ago. She has a great laptop, mackie mixer, & behringer speakers. Now the good part.....
She had 2 microphones
The singers mic had DUCT tape holding the wind screen on. Sound like you were singing in a cardboard box. The music sounded good, but the vocals were crap

The 2nd mic, had a 6 foot mic cable on it, so you really couldn't use it.

ya can get 3 cheap mics for $50 or less and some cheap mic cords for $20

Now the "rotation".....
The show started at 9pm, the wife and I gave her 2 songs each around 8:45. 2 friends showed up at 9:00 and put a songs in to. SO that is 4 person rotation, 2 songs in each.

We sang our first song around 9:30, the next was around 10:30. Nope, no other singers, just a lot of crappy music in between.

Couple other people I know showed up to sing, and nothing changed. No one seemed to care except my wife and I, and the 2 people we were hangin out with.

In my area, 95% of people don't care about karaoke quality.

What I want to do is make money for the bar so I can continue to demand, and get, top pay for my market.

I could get a dozen awesome singers to come to a show, sip water or soda pop because they're trying to preserve their golden throats, and then buy wireless SM58's at several hundred dollars a pop, and go for a very thin sliver of the karaoke pie..

... or....

I could aim for the dead center of the fattest, juiciest segment of today's bar going crowd so the people employing me.. the bar.. can have a giant sh!t eating grin on their face every night when they Z out the register.

It's not about what *I* want to hear or do.. if that was the case, i'd be spinning Stevie Ray Vaughn tunes all night.. it's about what the crowd wants, and giving it to them.

Well, I have seen you-tube videos used during a karaoke show.

The operators (can't bring myself to call 'em KJ's) were using a laptop.
They had their own background behind every karaoke track on the screen (you could still see those mfr logos though). It was some strange melancholy, morbid painting of Brian (the dog) from Family Guy sitting at a bar.

During the show... they dragged one drunk guy after another onto the stage to sing along with you-tube videos of gangstah rap tunes. I said sing along. The videos were standard music vids, not fan posted lyric vids. These guys would just attempt to sing along with the video. Pitiful.

If you like the guy running the show singing along (on mic) with any singer, any song, uninvited, you'd really like this.

These guys also played full length songs in between singers even though they had a list of about 10 singers going. The night ended abruptly when they played about 4 more gangstah rap tunes and shut 'er down even though they had 4 people waiting to sing.

Suffice to say I found this to be a poor imitation of karaoke.

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Never the same show twice!

Obviously you put on a good show. You have decent enough equipment, are a good singer, have some, ahem, personality, and you know what sound is about. That sounds like a good and fun combo to me -- you *should* make money for the bar and yourself.

If several aspects of that combination went in the toilet, I am betting you wouldn't be nearly as successful. People may not *think* they notice sound, but we all know when something sounds good and when it doesn't. It's almost subliminal.

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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.