Karaoke Forums

It's not. The publishers earn a revenue share on the commercial subscription plans that they do not earn on the home-use subscription plans.

Tangents and analogies will happen here (a lot). If you need help to ride it out and relax, I could give you my Mango Sangria recipe.

I truly do not care if they happen or not...I suppose I was emphasizing the fact for those that DO care. And no, keep your recipe--I am a naturally chill person............

This being the case, it would be interesting to know the general percentages they receive, to get an understanding of what type of markup is being applied. Ten times the consumer product rate STILL seems a bit out of kilter...

I can't share that information with you, but I can assure you that it is significant enough that a smaller markup would leave little room for profit.

Well you folks have had years to do it too but you're still behind the rest of the karaoke industry and years behind the music industry.

In all fairness, Sound Choice has done at least some of the legwork to sell MP3+G since the GEM series is exactly that. I don't know how that translates to selling individual tracks through an online portal, but again, in all fairness, until SC produces new content, it doesn't matter much to me.

-Chris

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-Chris

Uh, oh......here it comes........

Just curious: Has some sort of difference in licensing pricing always been in place, or is this just the publishers taking the opportunity to generate a larger revenue stream under the subscription models?

Well, sort of. Before, whenever the publishers were asked about commercial digital, the answer was a flat no, regardless of the pricing model.

I don't know if you realize this, but SC is a smaller company than Apple, Amazon, and Walmart. They are able to do things that smaller companies cannot.

Hey, I get that you hate SC and that you won't miss an opportunity to criticize it, but your criticism on this score is about the most ill-informed I've ever seen.

ITunes was right in there getting rights to go digital on the Beatles, weren't they? As in how many decades did it take? (Although that had another issue to it aka the Apple trademark.) I don't get why people can't see that karaoke companies have had their hands tied behind their backs as far as US licensing has gone.

That doesn't count. PHM sells MP3+G discs, but they sell them in single discs so you buy them in small doses. SC's option of buying the GEM series is a bit ridiculous. You shouldn't have to buy 2000 - 6000 songs at once. I love being able to just buy what I need, when I need it. A customer asks for a song that I don't have, and I find it, purchase it, and have it for them by their next turn, now THAT is a wonderful thing. And THAT is what ALL karaoke mfrs should be working towards.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

If DTE can do it, as a new company, and All Star can do it, there is no reason why ALL American mfrs can't offer downloads. It's just a matter of wanting to get your product out to the people, any way you can.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

I must have misworded my question, but it did bring up something else: When I was referring to a point in time before digital considerations, I was referring to the status of licensing pricing during the CD era--how could there have been a SPECIFIC difference in pricing, since there was no SPECIFIC difference in commercial and general consumer product offerings? Or am I missing that there WAS a "commercial CD" type of licensing???

Apparently, NOW if there is any difference, it is because of attempts to create new revenue streams from essentially the same product. I am just not convinced that this is being done in a way that is totally supported or protected under related legal statutes...

The commercial-focused product was more expensive because it had more songs on it. The per-song price was actually a bit lower for commercial CDs.

Harrington I don't hate sound choice at all - they produced the best karaoke tracks of any company in my opinion, but I don't like the way they've done business since they went out of production and it always seems like they want to be seen as the victim. And though I don't know you personally, I don't have any dislike of you either.

When I was in the karaoke game, I reported numerous pirates to sound choice, only to see no action taken whatsoever. The ones you did name here in Raleigh are still running multiple shows nearly two years later, and I see friends of mine who do run legal shows lose business to them, so yes a little irritated by that whole situation.

Again, the communication isn't quite getting completed. I am not asking about a "commercial-focused" product. How the company supposedly tried to market a particular product isn't really the crux of my question. I suppose what I am trying to ask about actually might be a bit rhetorical, to be honest. Up until the relatively recent endeavors to do subscription-based offerings, was there ANY differentiation in the publishers eyes, as far as licensing costs or whatever, in ANY of the music approved for production for karaoke?

Only on a per-artist basis. Some artists' songs got higher royalties.

So, essentially, from a publisher cost perspective, up until a few months or a year or so ago, there was technically NO SUCH THING as "commercial karaoke"??? Despite the fact that any given discs were produced and were perfectly fine for commercial use, now folks want to set up some sort of regulation for how these tracks are used? I am just not aware that these type of fundamental changes can just be arbitrarily made without some mechanism being in place to protect the consumers in this scenario. Creating or having a monopoly-type atmosphere for certain goods or services and then having excessive pricing for such good or services could possibly create some antitrust issues, perhaps on the publishing AND/OR the manufacturing end...