Karaoke Forums

Are albums big anymore? I can think of a few like Adele and Taylor Swift where people would want to have all of their songs on karaoke but the rest might be pick and choose. Unless the record companies were able to do it in a way where we could buy just those songs we wanted, we would be right back to complaining about "fluff."

thats true LL, but don't forget the major method of distribution for music is i-tunes. albums make up a much smaller part of the revenue to the major labels since walmart stopped being the largest music distributor and i-tunes took over. they could very easily just add the karaoke tracks to i-tunes and buy them one at a time as needed. works great for Tricerasoft, Select-a-track, etc. and with Sony closing their last CD plant this year, it may be down to purely digital distribution anyway.

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

But if they just produced the karaoke tracks along side of their regular tracks - it would mean nothing more than more money in their pockets to begin with. Plus you as a singer is going to know it's the right version since it would be the original. Also if they did full album karaoke releases, you might be able to sing that one song that no manu would ever put out simply because it was too expensive to license or they didn't feel it was a worthy candidate to return their money on. So if buying the entire karaoke album was the only way to purchase karaoke tracks (directly from the manu) you wouldn't be interested?

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

Price would be the deciding factor for me. I would not like my new music budget to be completely eaten up on a single artist. That just puts us back to a situation where we have to buy a slew of songs that never get used just to aquire one or two that will. I don't care much for the artist collections like that except for the rare occasion when I would buy one for a regular that I know is a huge fan of a particular artist. However, a good price could change my attitude.

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KNOW THYSELF

I do like obscure tracks but there are only a few artists that I might want the whole album for. We do have all three of Taylor Swifts but we do kid shows. But they usually just do a few tracks off of each.

The one thing that might come out of it could be more people singing karaoke if they could do their favorite group. It might appeal even more to the singers who would be into collecting their favorite group's karaoke CDG and bringing them in. We have had people want to sing their favorite group's more obscure song bring in the original CD and ask to sing along with it. So I could see a good market for fans of a group buying a complete "album" of their music.

All i'm getting at is if you can get the entire album - original artist recording minus vocals for the same price as a manu recreating it, that would be worth more IMO than the recreation.

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

Yeah, I get that--I am just saying that as a karaoke host buying music, I might just want to pay for the songs that are most likely to get done. But as a singer and fan of a certain group, I would most definately buy the entire album.

This is similar to what happened for a short time with Guitar Hero and Rock Band. There were a few artists that capitalized on the popularity of those console games and released huge amounts of music for them. Metallica released an entire album on Guitar Hero simultaneously with the regular CD release.

If I had a record company, I would at least test market it an then work with the artists and copyright holders to convince them of the financial upside of producing them side-by-side.

-Chris

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-Chris

Good conversation.

Here's what I propose; the producers of those "Now That's What I Call Music" CD's and "Kidz Bop" could create an entire new revenue source by including karaoke versions of their songs for, say, an extra $.50 per song, or maybe $5 for the album. It would include rippable cdg/ mp3g versions of the songs, which are generally your biggest top 40 hits of the year.

It's a no-brainer for at-home singers AND hosts. $25 for a disc with 20 songs you KNOW people are going to sing? Where do I sign?

And for those of us that do kids shows the Kidz Bop tunes offer "clean" versions of these songs so we don't get sandbagged by a lyric or two because we did not have the time to vet all 14,000 songs on our drives.

I will never, never, never forget doing one of my first kids shows, and some 9-yo boy comes up to sing "I Like the Way You Move" by Outkast. At the time, 5-6 years ago, it was in EVERY freakin' movie trailer and TV commercial, so it must be okay, right?

Well, in the middle of the song comes the rap with n-word this, f-word that, n-word this... the kid, oblivious of course, just sings what he sees on the screen.

I was at the bar getting a Diet Coke and you never saw a fat man run so fast for a stage.

So, for me at least, the Kidz Bop versions would be aces.

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Terry O'ke--- Fake Music for Real People.

The reason the labels do not make karaoke versions is simple, it's not economical for them to do so. If it was, they would. They are not going to press 1:1 CD and CD+G to sell together for maybe 5% of the market. It's easier to sell licences.

The K-Tel/Kidz Pop and similar products pay a licence fee to make their products just as the Karaoke manufacturers do. Their market is different than CD+G and again if they went 1:1,it would again would be for maybe 5% of the market, not to mention higher fees for the sync rights.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

It wouldn't cost them hardly anything to create a corresponding karaoke track. The discs would not be sold together, they would be sold as it's own entity. Obviously the market is going to be lower, so instead of pressing 1 million karaoke discs to correspond with the cd release, they produce 100,000. The packaging (like the Taylor Swift discs) would be the same as the actual album artwork - except with Karaoke written on it. The only added cost would paying someone to sync the graphics tracks - about 1 hour per song and once they get their final 'vocal' mix, they hit mute on the vocals & re-record the 'karaoke' track.
The only possibly setback is not all artists actually have control of their own works to allow that permission.

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

Absolute nonsense!!!!!

They have the ORIGINAL backing track which most people would love to sing to all they have to do is incorporate the lyrics and sync them. If podunk off the wall karaoke manufactures can do it I'm quite sure that Warner brothers, Sony and the like can do it much easier as they don't have to hirer any musicians to remake the track. The ORIGINAL musicians, song writers get would get a cut and wouldn't have to do any more work as it's already done. Taylor Swifts albums that were sold only on CD and then again on Karaoke were almost the same price and I bet that both she and Big Machine made a killing off of it. To make things even more profitable the could sell them as digital downloads without much trouble as all the agreements could be signed at the same time as the original song was made. I would also bet that if SC could use the original backing tracks that they would ramp up production and get back into the Karaoke business!!!!!


Funny Lonman and I posted at the same time and said a lot of the same things he just hit submit before I did

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I like everyone when I first meet them. If you don't like me that's not my problem it's YOURS!
A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet

Like I said, if it were profitable for them don't you think the labels would do it. I can't believe that in the last 30 years that not one person with the labels said "Hey we should press corresponding karaoke discs?" and it not being done if it were profitable.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

Someone did a Taylor Swift last night and I had this question--while the thought of singing to the originial exictes me, when Taylor Swift is on her album singing to these tracks, the studio has control of her volume in relation to the track. The average karaoke singer may find themselves drowned out by background singers or instruments on the chorus or "lost in the mix," so to speak. Yes, I can ride the board to compensate and yes, many karaoke tracks make you do the same thing. But some brands do seem to be designed to be sung to--or am I imagining this?

Wasn't Disney actually the first?

Also, I keep thinking a bout a brand (maybe Singing Machine?) that had a series using original Motown tracks? Could that be right? By that I mean not only DID they do it, but were they ALLOWED to do it?

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

as i understand, one of the Execs of Singing Machine was also previously an exec at Motown records so had easy access to that material. i love using those tracks.

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

Well those Motown tracks weren't vocal reductions, they WERE from the master tracks without vocals - you can tell by the authenticity of the recordings from the day, plus listening to them side by side. They had to have been made with permission.
Unlike the Original Footage - laserdisc series in the 90's, they used original video & music for the multiplex tracks, but once you switched into MPX mode to eliminate the vocal, the music sounded very much like a reproduction & not so much the original anymore.

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

I find this laughable. Not everyone is like me, that likes to do research and find out what is going on around me. MOST KJs that I know, couldn't care less. They do their thing, make their money and go home. Yo can look at the list of KJs that have actually gotten certified since the program started, compared to the amount of KJs out there to know that people are NOT informed, and SC has NOT done a good job informing them. SC relies on NOT informing everyone. The less people they inform, the more people they can sue, and the more money they make on settlements, or sales of the GEM series.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

Knowledge is Power.....or so it has been said.

Ultimatey, an individual is responsible for what they know and what they don't know. If someone sits back and waits for someone else to inform them, they won't end up knowing very much. They will also only know what someone else told them.

In today's Internet accessible world, they really isn't much excuse left for not knowing the in's and out's of running a small business. Especially one as relatively simple as hosting karaoke.

The More You Know.....<insert rainbow here>

-Chris

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-Chris

I agree that one should educate one's self. Many, however, do not feel that way. Most KJs that I have known just do it as a second job for extra money and couldn't care less about what is going on in the industry. Same with bar owners. Most don't care. They run small places with regular crowds and just want some entertainment. They don't care where that entertainment comes from. Remember, not every area is a metropolis like Seattle or Manhattan.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE