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Healthy bread

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"Integrity is choosing your thoughts, words and actions based on your principles and values rather than for your personal gain."
Unknown
"if a man has integrity, nothing else matters, If a man has no integrity, nothing else matters."
Lee McGuffey

I don't know if this was the forum where it was mentioned, but regarding mobile internet access or hotspots.

To the best of my knowledge, there is NO service in Canada that offer unlimited data plans, throttled or otherwise

the highest data plan I have seen offered was 2G for around $50/month


definately not worth the cost when you can get a might higher bitrate permant install for less money than that.

You could pay for it yourself, but then what if you have more than one venue?

Bob Latshaw (I assume) wrote on the Latshaw Systems Facebook page that he just got back from Nashville and would answer any questions about the summit since it will be a while before the video of it will be available.

http://www.facebook.com/LatshawSystems

If you didn't see the live feed, I can tell you that the "Digital License Plating" technology he presented was a far better solution than streaming for KJs. It's very similar to how they add the little "licensed to..." on the bottom of their songbooks, but it would do it on the fly to the CDG portion of an MP3+G when you order a song online and customize it just for you and during the playback of the song, at the bottom of the screen, you'd see a "licensed to..." mark right in the cdg video. He made some good points about how it was better than encryption, would work in all existing MP3+G apps, did away with digital rights management enabling the KJ to put a song on multiple machines, but yet discouraged sharing to others, and best of all you keep the file stored on your machine just like you do now and don't need an internet connection at every venue. It's basically just like your MP3+G files now but your name would be in them.

After some points he made about how the industry was "fragmented", it made me think they might take a stab at one stop shop place, similar to iTunes, but for the karaoke industry. So I checked the internet registrar of domain names to see the list of domain names that Latshaw Systems owned (and they have a few interesting karaoke related ones). I've seen them before, but the day after the summit, I noticed they registered the domain name icroons.com and I never saw it before. Strange name, but after a visit to dictionary.com (and the thesaurus), I realized its the only word that means "sing" and ryhmes with tunes. Call it speculation, but it wouldn't surprise me. Watch the summit when the video is released. After Bob spoke, just about every speaker after him at least once used the phrase "like Bob said...". I thought Bob's speech was the most impressive. Ryan Sherr's part was pre-recorded and he wasn't even there. My prediction is that Latshaw is going to pull a page out of the Steve Jobs playbook by starting with software and taking the next to media distribution. Anyhow, that's my take, but for those who didn't see the whole thing, watch the video when its released and judge for yourself.

I agree that if they're going to broadcast it anyway, they could have just made it a public event. I thought summits were like completely closed door events. I'm curious why they need time to "edit" it too before people can watch the non-live copy. Makes you wonder what they're going to edit out.

I caught the first half of the debate before having to leave for work. In my opinion, the editing will be purely to tidy up the technical difficulties and make it easier for the viewer to watch and listen to. Enough people would have watched it to highlight any funny business, and from the 2 1/2 hours I saw it came across as people trying to work together to find a solution not as manufactors vs everyone else.

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'A genius is one who can do anything except make a living'. Joey Adams.

You beat me to the punch on this one. I think Bob's portion was one of the best thought out presentations of the day. He actually prepared and brought up some very, good points.

-Chris

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-Chris

Are you kidding me?

Here's what I took out of Bob Latshaw's comments ...

"I have not added a Kiosk to my software because "I" (Bob Latshaw) think anyone that uses one is not paying attention to the singers needs"

Really! Thanks Bob for insinutaing that I don't care about my singers. It just so happens that I use a Kiosk and my singers think it's great. In fact, the longer I've used it, the more singers are warming up to it. Once again, Bob is deciding and dictating what his users can and will do. I feel sorry for them.

"I don't intend to patent this "License Plating" technology, I want to share it"

Really? News flash Bob! You are NOT the inventor, nor the first to debut this "technology" that you're self-proclaiming to be your own. As I recall, the first to release such technology to the public was Power Karaoke with their "Power CD+G Stamper" product. And anyone that uses CompuHost's KJ Media Pro HD as I do, knows that each file is "License Plated" on the fly with the users ID as part of the unlocking process. But go ahead and live your fantasy, we all know better.

"It doesn't matter how much we charge, "WE" (referring to the software and content producers) "ARE" the industry, and we therefore "CONTROL" it!"

This little tidbit was thrown in during comments made by another speaker regarding the initial pricing structure. Not only does he wish to control what "his" unfortunate users can and will do, he also wishes to control the rest of us with regard to what we pay to stay in business!

Finally, I find it amazing that noone sees the resemblance of their new "tethering" technology to the "KJ Media Pro HD" technology that Compuhost developed? It's uses the exact same process (download locally, unlock later), only with tethering, at the end you own nothing, unlike KJ Media Pro HD where you at least own the songs. I'm waiting to see what my software of choice Compuhost does with this, I'm betting they'll at least look out for their users, as they always have in the past.

tbreen

So he didn't know he wasn't the first person to think about the license plating idea. You think he's the first person in history who thought of something not realizing its already been done. I've never seen it so I didn't either. Anyhow, by saying he had no intention of patenting it, he was basically saying he wanted the industry to use it and it wasn't his intention to profit from the technology. He was trying to help the industry and I don't know how you could perceive this any other way.

When the guy from Joltsoft talked about users asking why they charged $1.99 for tracks when itunes only charged 99 cents, he was right when he said there are valid reasons for why it should cost more, and what he was saying to him was that just because people complain, doesn't mean the cost is not valid, and that if his company caved to end users on price and suffered because of it, it could be detrimental to the industry. Karaoke is completely a different market than the regular music industry and if you use the supply and demand theory, it would make sense that karaoke tracks cost more. In an industry that is dying (and this was the reason this summit existed in the first place), I thought it was more than appropriate that he said that the industry needed to stand together and not cave to demands that didn't make sense. I'd be willing to bet that if you could see some meetings that take place behind closed doors in other industries, you'd see the exact same type of things talked about. I garantee you that when the ipad was invented, there were people in the meetings that brought up things like "well the user surveys say that people want a USB port and that it should cost less" and I'm sure Steve Jobs was like "No" and he too wasn't known for putting things softly either, but you just don't normally see that stuff talked about. Do you honestly think that businesses are always giving customers everything they want? They are the industry, and they do control it, and most of the people in that room felt like they've lost control. Bob was reminding them that they do indeed still have control. It needed to be said. I mean I get how as a consumer of the industry you don't like that idea and think you should have some more say, but that's just not how the real world works. This industry is dying because of the consumers getting everything they want without paying for it.

There were a lot of ideas and views expressed in this summit and it will be debated for quite a while in just the same way people here debate which software is better or which karaoke producers tracks are better, but these are all grown men doing in a much more respectful way than we do on here, which is why they are where they are and why we weren't invited, and you at least have to respect that, and you also have to respect that they are all victims of piracy in one way or another and to not understand the mood in that room and not understand their need to fight back is ridiculous. Why do you think most speakers after him used the "like Bob said..." phrase? Bob just had the guts to say things others were thinking. If you've ever read the biographies of people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, you'd see that they both rubbed a lot of people the wrong way too, but they had the guts to say what needed to be said. Those type of people are either respected or hated. They're not looking for love. They're trying to get things done, and this industry needs people like that or it will die, and if that happens, you may have a different point of view when you no longer have a job.

..and I agree with him about kiosks as well. If a singer has ever been to a venue where all they need to do is come up when they're called and simply tell the KJ what they want to sing, suddenly being told you need to use a computer across the room to accomplish the same task is insulting to the singers. You're treating them like cattle at that point, and it makes you look lazy, and it basically says you could be replaced with a karaoke juke box, and the moment the venue owners realize that, again, you're out of a job. I think you need to re-examine your logic on all counts. You know, sometimes when you ask your singers to do something, just because they do it, doesn't mean they agree. It may mean that they are your friend and don't want to hurt your feelings. I'm sure if I asked all my friends to tap their heels together three times before walking into my house, I'm sure they'd do it, but if I went around claiming that my friends "liked" to do it, I'd be quite delusional.

I can think of at least one venue where singers MUST like the kiosk system, because they actually PAY to use it.

they pay to sing the song, they pay to buy the songs that are not in the catalog.

Now mind you, it is in an Asian/Japanese community where tipping/bribing/paying for karaoke is the norm, but from what I hear Toqer also gets a lot of college kids on Friday nights

to use a quote from him from a conversation I recently had with him "they certainly don't come her for the drinks, they're too expensive"


When I have a little more spare cash available I will be posting pictures and videos of the brand new kiosk system on facebook, with his blessing. I need to get a new digital camera first because I dropped the one I own..

-James

hmm maybe someone should move these posts. We've gone all the way from discussing the summit to a books vs kiosk kind of debate..

Not to beat a dead horse, but what Latshaw proposed was not what you're referring to and has never been done, so unless you can prove otherwise, I think we all have to assume that it has never been done.

Power CD+G Stamper lets users put their own stamp on their own CDG files, and user IDs in files is also different. This is the first proposal that the name be stamped in the files on the fly from the server you download them from. It's like a hybrid of both the things you're talking about, but its never been put together in that fashion, and that indeed would warrant a new patent. It's no different than Henry Ford using two existing designs (the engine and the wheel) and putting them together to make something new.

Look, its obvious you don't like the guy, and want to hate every idea he has, and that's fine. But you're trying to portray him as a hack and that's just not the case. He's developed some really great ideas over the last few years for this industry, and if you don't like them then use someone else's products, but at least have some respect. It's ok to disagree, but what you're doing is flat out bashing. Everyone at that summit was a mature adult and everyone presented different ideas, but no one there was bashing anyone.

grrr why do my quotes keep disappearing


In any case I don't see the difference between the two. The end result is EXACTLY the same. Your karaoke track ends up with a unique serial id which is embedded in the cdg file.

That's definitely not a new concept.

Like the other person said, chartbusters has been doing it for a couple of years. First with their custom discs, and then with the KJMP drive.


The only difference might be in the way it is done. For with the 'new' system maybe it requires internet access to authenticate the file, thereby making it slightly more secure than the KJMP drive *if somthing is completely offline, both parts of the key must be present on the drive, whereas online half of the key can be stores on a server makeing it more difficult to hack*

Be that as it may it is definately not a new concept.

I take issue with people who take credit for things they didn't start.

Watch the video when it comes out. His whole point was that if you put the person's actual name on screen for people to see, then they'd be less likely to share it. An ID number isn't embarrassing for another KJ to play the file, but if it says "Licensed to John Doe" and he's not John Doe, he'd think twice about using it because every time the file is played, you can't get around it. Some KJs have done this on their own with the CDG stamper to prevent DJs working under them from stealing the files, but no karaoke company has ever thought to put the person's actual name on the screen on every file downloaded, and if they had, I'd like to think that with all those karaoke companies present in that room, that someone would have called him out on it.