Karaoke Forums

Tom, thanks for your explaination. Yes, it's that "live" sound that I was posting about. The best example was the "At Last" track. As soon as the first note is played the room goes silent in anticipation.....

I am in complete agreement with the posters above regarding track listings on the labels. Singers DO make mistakes, and so do I. I have noticed this trend with standard music discs as well, and it's a true PITA for professional use.

At this point I end up printing my own label with the track listing and putting it over the original- and would rather not.

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" Disc based and loving it..."

I have to agree i would also like the cd to contain the track listing label

I love what Bastiat has to say, and how he addresses issues. I'm very quickly becoming a huge fan, plus I've always loved PHM's versions. I only had a few discs of theirs until I bought out a retired KJ and picked up a bunch more.
One thing I always loved about the PHM Rock cdgs, was some of the NON-mainstream tunes on them. I've got some Emo guys who rock them out.
Unlike some of you here, I don't mind the Quick Hitz/Fast Trax/Singer's Solution, however I've been entertaining the idea of regularly buying PHM as well, this thread enforces it even more.
Perhaps after I replace my transmission and move into the new house I can make this a reality.
Thanks Tom for your candor.

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If you're going to eat my mic, do you at least want some condiments?

We have many requests to place the song listings on the CDs like we used to. We are looking into ways to do this. The reasons we no longer place the song listings on the CDs are multiple but mainly just another extension of the licensing issue. Let me explain.

Back in the day when licensing and piracy wasn't as much of a problem as it is now, we used to press (injection molding process) all of our discs. From a licensing perspective it was rarely a problem, but what it meant was that we had a cut off deadline. Whatever songs we decided on had to be licensed or approved for licensing before we went to press. Occasionally when we couldn't get a reply from a publisher in time, we had to make a decision based on previous history, the song writer, etc. as to whether or not the song would get an approval. If we felt that there was a very good chance of that then we would commit to the song and cross our fingers (our legs, bless ourselves, etc.) and add it to the list.

Of course we weren't always right. Sometimes we would miss songs thinking we wouldn't be able to get approval, and sometimes we released songs without getting the approval we anticipated. In the case of the latter, it was rarely a huge problem as we would enter a settlement and agree to sell only what was pressed to date and not repress. Even at that often times the publisher would even let us repress if we gave them a better rate.

Bear in mind that this was a time when the monthly concept was very competitive and some of the competition wasn't licensing products at all. I don't like to name companies but seeing everyone knows that I sued Panorama for trademark infringement I will use them as an example. Panorama did not license any of its tracks claiming that karaoke was "fair use". Now to be fair, while I was none to happy with this company for infringing on my trademark and diverting half of my market to themselves, they were in their rights to claim a "fair use" defense. I didn't agree with it, nor where there many legal opinions in agreement, but nonetheless there were attorneys who were adamantly in agreement as was evident by the very competent representation that they had.

Also, their tracks were very good. On average they weren't as good as ours in my opinion, but there were times when they released better versions of songs than we did (and don't think that didn't go up my rear end sideways. Twas hell to play for the production staff come Monday morning). To further the point, there were many producers/labels at that time releasing unlicensed products and it was in that atmosphere that we were constantly under pressure to meet our deadlines. We were routinely criticized by both our dealers and our customers for being late with our products. However it was always due to licensing issues and not production issues.

Our most serious competitors were not licensing tracks so they weren't waiting till the last minute, nor were they pulling songs at the last minute, which was another issue for us. There were many occasions when the audio master and artwork was ready to be sent to the pressing plant only to be informed at the last minute that a particular song would not be licensed. The only advantage that we had was that our competitors were relatively clueless as to song selection. Most of them were using Billboard to pick their selection which at that time was a scam (they were using Soundscan as 75% of their formula for charting the songs. I believe that it is now 50% which is more reliable) so we were able to pick better songs for our selections.

Okay so now fast forward a few light years and we now have an environment where licensing is even more hostile. Disc sales have fallen way below what would be practical to press so now everything must be burned instead. The biggest problem with burning aside from playback issues is the printing on the label. There is really only a couple of ways to cost effectively print on CDs which would be silkscreen, offset, or inkjet printing. The problem with the latter is that most inkjet printers use a water base ink making it subject to water bleed. There are some media that can dramatically reduce water bleed but it still is not perfect and in my opinion not stable enough for a professional product. The only exception is with a solvent based inkjet system which is what we use at present, but the equipment is well over $100,000 base price and the print heads must be replaced frequently which renders this machine cost prohibitive for our purposes so therefore we outsource this to company that can do this at a reasonable rate.

We do have silkscreen equipment but the problem with the silkscreen process is that you have to burn a screen every time you do a print run, or print more than you'll actually use. Either is not a very good solution. There are two different approaches that we can see to solve this problem. One is to use a water based inkjet printer then run it through the screen printer with a clear coat of lacquer. The other would be to silkscreen a base print leaving room for the release date and song listing. The discs could then be placed in a thermal printer with an image aligner to complete the variables. However, none of these solutions are all that easy to perform consistently and cost effectively, but we are working on them.

I know this was a rather lengthy explanation but judging by the number of you expressing your desire for song listings on our CDs I thought it was deserving of such explanation. With that I hope I've answered your questions.

Makes sense to me. It really is awesome getting a under the hood look at all the issues regarding what we usually think of as a simple, straight forward process.
Would producing a separate sleeve insert with the CD number along with the title artist and track number be a viable solution for everyone? Those could be produced in house while the discs are being screened. Then people could put them behind the disc. Pull the disc out with or without the insert and read the insert.

All I can say is thank you for taking the time to address this issue with us

There seems to be enough "empty" space on the discs to use a felt tip pen and just write the titles on the disc. You might have to get a little creative to get them all in there but You could make it work, as long as the disc isn't mostly black.

A separate sleeve would be doable. I don't know if the packaging machine can handle an insert so everything might have to be packaged manually which could be a big problem. I'll check with packaging and see what the possibilities are. We might be able to make a four panel booklet that's perforated in the middle. We've also though of using an alternative method of packaging i.e. Univenture sleeves, etc., however we would have to either manually stuff them or purchase different packaging equipment. There maybe solutions that we've never entertained so by all means we're always open to suggestions.

You're quite welcome. It's why I decided to avail myself to this forum.

I still think you need to have someone over the person who selects the songs you release..maybe one or two are on the charts..the other stuff noone will sing..again I have alot of those cds..that NEVER get used because ..there are no good songs on them or artist you never heard of..sorry but just being honest. I guess i will just have to go back to what i was doing before..buy your stuff when there is something on it somone wants...i see no other choice.

Maybe they could take requests from us KJ's that have had requests from our customers.
Sort them out, see if licensing is available, do it!

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