Karaoke Forums

08/16/2011

Your customers want the latest greatest songs. Maybe you don't get paid enough to buy new ones, or the venue has no interest in giving you a budget to buy them.

I've solved this by letting customers purchase songs for the venue. It started years ago, with customers giving us their CDG's for keeps. Now it's evolved into something completely automated, no need for ripping, no need for renaming, no need to QA your rips, none of that. Just simplicity. Here's a picture that illustrates it.


Again, no "KJ" intervention required.

I don't have the time to put a dollar value on what was purchased, but maybe tricerasoft1 can do that (sorry man, my xml records aren't really good for that sort of thing)

I'll guess over $1000.

Saying from 4-29 to present isn't exactly accurate either. My system only runs 4 nights a week. It's 62 days the system has run till present.. We're buying about 6 songs per day.

The issue of karaoke piracy could be solved the same way it was solved for the music industry. Make it easier to be legit than it is to pirate. You don't get there through litigation, you do it through technology.

If a customer can download songs automatically to a KJ's system, they are more than happy to pay a few bucks to have that song NOW. If you don't think your customers care about, or understand the issues of copyright, you don't give them enough credit.

Customers buying you cdgs, and downloads? The vast majority of customers I've seen won't even put a buck in the tip jar... ....you're blessed
How about not having any tracks at all, just a few mediums for playing karaoke tracks, and let customers bring in their own tracks......don't have a disk, well I guess you don't sing then...... ...I wonder how our amatuer legal eagles would respond to a show like that......
ps..I can invision, like in "Animal House", your customers standing and shouting....Toger, Toger, Toger....on and off, all night long.....they must really appreciate you....seriously, you got some great customers.....

Oh i've had customers give me discs in the past. Maybe 1 or 2 a year it happens, but only because they do not sing anywhere else and do not feel like bringing in their discs everytime or they got bored with the songs & bought new discs and would retire the old discs to me.
I would have to wait and see before I put a pay for download system in our show. If it is found to be legal (I still don't know despite what others have said/argued) then i'd rather still do it myself at the show, charge $1 over what the song costs (service fee :c) ).

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Isn't that sort of being biased (especially so, since tricerasoft does pay for that download link to my left?)

Toqer:
In my opinion, it's all about "control" and nothing less. Notice that SC wants to sell the gem: 6,000 songs of "their choice" you can buy for $4,500.00?

They'd sell a ton more if you could choose your own and pay $0.99 cents a song - yes, that's 25% more than the gem's cost and there'd be LOT of customers willing to "kick in a buck" to get the song they want. Just ask Amazon how much they are selling.

But SC won't do that because they want to try to control everything and everybody.

i gotta side on SC with this one. they picked the 6000 songs most requested. for a premade set (like EVERY manu has), not a bad way to go.

Sounds like what CB does, $2.00 a song and you can get them on an 8gb SM card.
hell, i pay Tricerasoft $1.60 a song so even that for SC quality would be perfect.

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

My own statistics wouldn't lie to me Paradigm..

We've tracked which songs were played during this period. Out of 10,000 songs (including new downloads) there was only 1200 unique songs sung.

In this set of 10,000 songs was one gem diamond set, of which we've only used 75 songs.

So 75 songs out of 2000 used basically.

Likely a lot of these tracks could have been purchased from tricerasoft (zoom/sunfly/sbi) So somewhere between $150-$600 for the same amount of coverage.

That's the beauty of the CB KJMP product. After the $200 initial investment, songs are $1.50 a piece (if you purchase 100 credits at a time). I have no problem at all with that price as I am only paying for something that is actually being used. Wish all manufacturers offered a version.

What I don't understand is how Chartbusters got the license to make these in the first place. All the other karaoke companies have stated at one point or another that the IP holders won't allow them to sell on a hard drive format.

Guess they were able to convince them that their protection scheme would be secure enough for the general public.. *shrug*

Only biased for myself. With the we said/we said of download legalities (we say it is legal, we say it isn't legal), like someone suggested if Tricerasoft attached a copy of a license for each song, i'd would be more apt to fully get on board with this. Until something is clearly spelled out where everyone can understand & say AH FINALLY A DEFINITIVE ANSWER, I still do not know.
However much of Tri.. says does make sense, just would like to see more proof like the other site that attaches the license agreement to each song - however again those are only music tracks only, no graphics.

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

First, I sincerely thank you for the info regarding the GEM set. That's the good news...

The bad news is only that I hope the U.S. comes up with some sort of blanket licensing for downloads as the UK has done, making them a legal source of tracks in the near future for you...

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"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

So you're paying double for a hard drive (same exact hard drive you'd buy at best buy) and you only get 1 manufacturer? Not to mention, no new content, ever? Unless you ship the hard drive back?

And you're locked into using 1 software?

Tricerasofts model should be the model for the industry. Let anyone with a 1/2 a bit of skill (or a ton of moxie like myself) create software that interfaces a store that carries every brand. Not to mention, the number of tracks available there are FAR greater than what's on compost-host and fart-busters.

Someone told me, "OH DON'T RELEASE YOUR IDEAS! FOLKS WILL STEAL THEM!" Money is nice, but I'd rather see a majority supporting the right thing to do (both technically, and morally for the karaoke industry)

So you're paying double for a hard drive (same exact hard drive you'd buy at best buy) and you only get 1 manufacturer? Not to mention, no new content, ever? Unless you ship the hard drive back?

And you're locked into using 1 software?
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You've been misinformed. I just refreshed my hd Thursday, it added at least 15 or more songs. Who told you "no new content, ever?"

I can also use this hard drive to store other music or whatever on as well as the CB song do not fill it up. Not sure why you say "double".

I'll go out on a limb and say this is one of the best investments I have made with my karaoke/dj dollars! The fact that I already had Compuhost made it an easy decision for me. And if I want to charge customers to unlock the songs, I have that option.

I DO hope other manufacturers get on board with this. I am moving towards 11,000 songs. With dupes it's about 19,000. Now I don't have to worry about dupes anymore!

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

The "Tricerasoft model" does not work when you are at a venue that does not have net access. And believe me, we play many that do not. Other problem with using Tricerasoft for me is that thier country listing is rather sparse as compared to CB (not bashing Tricerasoft, I use them for many tracks, just not during a show).

Oh you mean they transfer the songs over the internet to your hard drive? I thought CB said..

Oh nevermind.

I got net access everywhere I go via 3g on my phone. Anyways, nice way to hijack my thread into a compost-heap thread.

Sorry, didn't realize that the thead was all about you (misconception on my part that it was a discussion about alterternative technolgy to buying discs). As you were.

It's not like a download per se if i'm not mistaken, they still come in a locked format & the person that gets the update still has to pay for any song unlocked.

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

What happens if your phone decides to shut down after say it runs out of juice at the show? Or do you keep it plugged in?

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

either way, i have to pay $1.50 to play a song i downloaded from the internet be it from Chartbuster, or Tricerasoft etc. i do not see the difference, i can not play the songs until i pay for them.

back to the op, it does open up a whole new world, and you have a system different from the rest of us, but obviously have your crowd. sounds like you got them figured out and doing a lot of work for you, good job. (really....not a dig)

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