Karaoke Forums

I am having a hard time competing with most of the KJ's around here. They have hard drives loaded with 350,000 or more songs. I seriously doubt they have all the discs to back these songs. I still spin the discs. I would love to have a set up with a couple hundred thousand songs but can't get in enough places to make the money needed to buy anywhere CLOSE to that many. I packed it all up a couple years ago and just started back up a couple months ago. I have run into this in several places. They pretty much laugh at me when I tell them how many songs I have.....what do I do??

Start asking for the songs your singers want and buy them as you need them. I have a clipboard that singers will write down their requests & order custom discs a few times a month from selectatrack.com & allstarcustom.com
Works out well, You don't need to compete with a large library if you get what your singers want. I only have a meeger 14,000 non dup'd library in comparison to some of the pirate shows around here.

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

I posted on another thread I had 8500 songs....oop's, was supposed to be 5500. Thats all. But, I don't have requests for many songs I don't have now since they look through the book and find enough to sing for the night. I will start telling them and do the custom discs I guess but the hardest part is the bar owners look at joe blo with 350,000 songs compared to my 5500 and they still do it cheaper than what I will even load my trailer for. Around here it seems quanity is going over quality. I've even offered a free night just to get in the door....no go.... It's got a lot rougher in the last few years I'm finding.

I will check out the two sites. Thanks Lonnie.....do they have a pretty quick turn around?

There is no legal way to acquire that much music without buying the original media that cover it (discs, mostly).

The good news is that no one needs that many songs to thrive as KJ. Follow the advice about finding out what your patrons want and you can't go wrong.

Your competitors are pirates. You can report them by sending an email to piracy (at) hlpc (dot) US

(not .com)

Report the bars, too. These leads will be added to a target list and if there are enough in the area to justify it, Sound Choice will send an investigator out and start shutting them down.

Thanks so much!! That puts me in the right direction. I guess my next project is getting all my songs on a hard drive.......I have no clue how to do it. Anyone close to me?

All Star is usually about a weeks turnaround often times sooner, selectatrack i have waited anywhere from 5-10 days from the time I place my order. I also order from Sound Choice custom on occasion, they are a little longer usually almost 2 weeks.

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

Where are you located? There are plenty of people very willing to help around here.....ask away. BUT, before you ask too many questions do a search first.

First of all, if you took every karaoke track created since time began, it would not equal 350,000. Heck if you took every unique karaoke song, it wouldn't even reach 1/4 of that. These are BS numbers that only matter to other KJ's. The simple fact is that it isn't having the MOST songs, it's having the RIGHT songs. Everyone here will agree that 95% of the songs sung any given night come from the same "Karaoke Top 1000".

I never give a number to clients or anyone. When asked "How many songs do you have" I say "I have a TONS of music with everything needed for a successful party" although sometimes I do say "Bazillions" . Unless you only have 500 songs, the number of tunes you have shouldn't be the reason you get or lose a gig.

Totally agree with everyones responses. If you have a decent core selection of songs you dont need 200,000 or even 20,000 songs. My songlist is somewhere around 6,800 non duplicated songs right now. I use a list and order songs that my patrons request. I even get comments from singers that I have songs that others do not. I have never had a owner ask me how many songs I have before hiring me.

I have seen many bigger books at other kj's shows but most of them list thier duplicate tracks. Who wants to weed through all of the duplicate songs?

My core library is DK and the rest is extra, I now have over 18,000 songs and have weeded out most of the dupes. I have been told their are only 46,000 original karaoke tracks. That's counting the same song done by the same artist on different labels. All you really need for an evening depending on how long you play is 60 to 75 max. You could get by in theory on that, if it happens to be the 60 to 75 that want to be sung on that evening,are in your library. Have a nice day.

Harrington, you're telling ktim48 to report pirates and a few posts above lonman talks about pirate shows all around him. Are you sending investigators there first? And we still have several "pirates" operating in the Raleigh/Durham area two years after being named by Sound Choice, so doesn't sound like anybody is getting shut down at all. Send folks to help lonman, he's a loyal customer.

Actually, my FastTracks currently lists over 400,000 tracks, and KJ Pro lists about 388,000, and those numbers would probably double if you included foreign language discs.

There are ALOT of karaoke tracks in production!

BTW, to the OP, I feel your pain. I have about 13,600 unduplicated listings, a tad over 18,000 total. My biggest competition down the street has the de facto 323,342,2423 tracks, and advertises it all over the place.

BTW, don't waste your time reporting them. I've reported this guy several times over the years to all of the agencies and manus, and no one cares. One of the sites has a flyer that describes karaoke piracy and the laws to bar owners. I can't find it this second, but someone else will know what I'm talking about and link it. Print that and send it to the bar owners. If that doesn't help, not much will.

I found the key is to educate singers first off that that guy is a pirate cheat, explaining HOW he has that large of a library, then assuring singers that if you don't have a song in your book, that you'll have it by the next week, and obviously following through.

I buy every song anyone requests if I don't have it, and average about $20-25 a month in new music, which is about 1/2 of what I was spending when I bought the big compilation disc releases. Even at that, I find that 75% of the time, the singer sings the song once (if ever), then no one ever sings it again. Of my 13,600 tracks, my CompuHost fun facts shows that only about 1100 unique songs were sung in the past calendar year, and about 20% of those were only sung once.

So, like everyone else said, shop SMART and don't be a size whor*. You're show will be better for it in the end. IN THE END....HA!

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C Mc
KJ, FL

They've already been through once. A nice chunk of places did at the very least have to drop all their SC tracks on their hard drives & acquire the GEM in lieu. Some dropped SC altogether which actually helped me a bit as those singers looking for SC tracks have migrated my way.
Honestly i'm not worried about the pirates though, I still have more songs (even though the 'numbers' don't reflect that as far as 50,100,200K) that actually interest customers over tons of dups that most of those shows offer and never getting anything new because they don't think they have to.

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

I can only speak from the customer's (in this case, read "singers and audience" rather than the actual customer--the bar) perspective, but--by and large--most customers don't care if the show is legal or not. I mean, some of us do, but most are only in it for a good time. And some pirates do run fun, entertaining shows--but a lot of them don't.

A song list isn't enough to pull a crowd. I would check out some of these other shows, and see what the crowd is like, the interaction is like, and the general level of business in the bar on that night vs. another, similar night of the week in that bar. See what works, and see what doesn't. Take whatever ideas that you can if there are good ones, and note whatever isn't working so you can tool your pitch to the bars you are trying to get in at.

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Co-host of The Greatest Song Ever Sung (Poorly), a karaoke-themed podcast

Thanks for all the advice!! I knew I could count on you guys just like years ago. The only reason I got back into it is some of my old customers told a bar about me and talked them into contacting me. The question of songs did come up but I hooked them on the first show and number of songs is moot. Been there since. Branson, Missouri is where I'm having the problem getting in. Guess I'll see what happens. Thanks again!!!

I also have a good core foundation setup:
soundchoice foundation 1,2
soundchoice bricks 1,2,3,4,5
charbusters essential's 1,2,3,4,5,6,7
DK 1-87, wish i had the full set

and to be honest, they are what get sung the most.....

i've bought 9 of the 45 song all star cards and i have only played 5 or 6 songs from it and that's is new music back to 2010 to fill what i didn't have.

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It's all good!

I started doing karaoke in Nov '09. I started out with 500 tracks. I know that's not a lot and I did get complaints at first. However, I did what has been suggested here. Every week, I asked my customers to write down or tell me what songs they wanted to sing. Each week, I would purchase the songs they wanted. That is how my song library grew.

Today, I currently run 2 very successful karaoke shows. One for 2 years (Thurs night) and the other for 3 years (Tues night) straight. I currently have a little over 2,500 songs and I'm doing just fine. I still purchase new music when requested every week, but I've found that my existing library does very well in my area.

I totally agree, it's not how many songs you have. It's more important to have the songs that your customers want to sing.

If you have Sound Choice do NOT put them on your hard drive without their permission. To get their permission you need them to audit your collection. As I am totally against this practice, I only use my Sound Choice stuff from the discs. Everything else I own is on my hard drive. That said, I have about 3500 songs. The place I work at has WiFi, so I download songs from Tricerasoft on demand, if I get a request that I don't have. I buy credits before I run a show, and use them as needed.

As for what Harrington said about reporting the local pirates, you can do that, but don't expect much results. Others on here here have done that over and over, and are still waiting for results. I'm not trying to start anything, just telling you the facts, as have been reported by others on this site.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

I have a new investigator who will be heading up in his direction as soon as he's trained, probably in a couple of months.,