Karaoke Forums

You do have a point I hadn't thought of, Lonman. I was wondering more along the lines of how come I am surrounded by people who have bizillions of SC songs yet no one BOUGHT them?

I selec0ted 6 months because I bought a 5-track custom from Clark earlier this year (about may/?). Now there is no custom it will bee a while before I purchase another sound choice product, I simply cannot justify a whole disc for one song. I hope you're taking note SC!

I have a list of SC discs that I am looking for to add 1 or 2 songs from them to my collection. That list is now down to 10 discs. It was 33 discs, mostly from the Spotlight Series. I purchased a custom CDG from Clark to fill in the songs from the rarest, most expensive discs which was 15 songs that I couldn't get any other way. In the last 18-24 months I have paid as little as $3 for a disc (new) and as much as $50 for a rare disc (used).

My motivation lies in fulfilling the customers' requests, maintaining a 1:1 content ratio and enhancing my own sense of satisfaction with my collection of karaoke choices for the singers.

When I first started singing karaoke the KJ's who ran the show had a Foundation 1 & 2 and The Bricks and a few dozen SC CDG's in their collection along with a full set of DK and Pioneer CDG's and a bunch of random CDG's from other brands. It was from the perspective of a singer and audience member that I formed my opinion of the karaoke track itself and it was long before I had ever heard of Kurt Slep and Norbert & Debi Stovall and to be honest, SC's quality was outstanding as well as CB's country tracks. My point is, there never was an agenda other than to obtain quality tracks. I am isolated in my market and have limited (in more ways than one) competition and when I licensed the GEM series 3 years ago, I did it simply because it made sense to me to have 6000 un-duplicated tracks at that price. Piracy and lawsuits didn't enter into the decision and frankly, it was later that I got drawn into the forums and the discussion/debate.

Why do I continue to purchase SC product? Quite simply it is because of consistent quality and because they are the only company that produced that particular track.

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Never the same show twice!

The results are pretty interesting so far. Pretty much what I thought, but interesting. Of the small sample of 36 votes, over half are not buying Sound Choice at all. Several of the others are people that buy used. Custom discs got some votes but one a couple are buying new discs.
I would guess most of these votes came from people with libraries that just don't find value in buying new discs when there are only one or two songs on the disc that they need\want. It was different before there were quality downloads. I would buy discs all the time. I didn't stop buying them because I was a pirate and my guess is most of the votes are the same. We have some disc based hosts and a few that like to have a disc as a purchase "record". I think Lonman may be working toward a second system and the GEM is an attractive option for him. But how many Lonman's are out there today.

James contends that 19 of every 20 copies (still can't find where those numbers come from) are pirated. I contend that many of the pirates would never buy a Sound Choice library. Piracy hasn't hurt their sales (blood, turnip) nearly as much as it hurt the hosting market. I also contend that Sound Choice's over whelming decline within it's available customer base is due to their failure to offer modern\flexible delivery methods. We bought SC at one time. We are still buying; just not as much directly from them.

...For me, the last SC CDG I purchased was in the last year (several months backs, sometime in 2012). Before that, while rebuilding some of those I had sold off many years ago, I think it was early 2011? The only time I thought about the GEM Series was when it was on Sale, when someone was selling a Used Set a few months back and only if SC were to take a Buy Back/Trade-In Credit. Otherwise, I really don't feel the need to purchase anything else from SC.

...Even going a step further, in the last couple of years, I even tried to see if I could run a show without using SC as much since I carry a decent variety of other Manufacturers. To my surprise, most don't seem to really care that much. Only a few, very few, if they had Manufacturer Awareness, ever requested SC or Chartbuster. That wasn't the case back in the 90's.

I don't get any brand specific requests, either.
As for Sound Choice, they are like any other Karaoke company that has stopped production. The market is moving on. Those that have SC already have it. Those that are starting out new are not looking at SC so much, since they have NONE of the new music from the last five years. When they produced they were good. Towards the end, not as much. If they want to be relevant again they need to produce. Otherwise there are plenty of other brands out there that are producing good Karaoke. Kurt doesn't seem to get it. His material is NOT as relevant as it used to be.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

I have been actively boycotting SC since 2009 when this legal process of theirs started. I do have a few SC discs bought prior to 2009. I use other manus product if I need a certain song, it is possible to run an effective karaoke service with no SC. Since I will be retiring from karaoke hosting in 2 1/2 months I doubt I will start buying again.

My situation is a combination of the reasons mentioned. I am only 3-4 years in so I can still use a lot of the basics. My last non-custom SC purchases were artist discs for Cyndi Lauper and Joan Jet because their songs get done a lot and I wanted to upgrade the versions I had. I do think it was worth it, musically, whenever those songs get played.

But because I started when Custom discs were available I tended to order by request and get Customs more than buy regular discs just for one song. Sometimes the song requested would have required me to buy a whole Brick to get it and not just one disc. So delivery method does have something to do with it but not so much because there were no downloads but because the Custom option has come and gone through the years. So delivery method is a factor but I'm not sure the lack of downloads was SC's fault as much as they had their hands tied by the publishers.

I hate that reasoning that goes Pirates aren't hurting SC because if they had to pay for it they wouldn't have bought it. That is exactly what a person with a personal drive who gave home parties told me. It wouldn't hold up in court if I stole a car off a new car lot and said that to Ford. If someone finds the product valuable enough to use than they would buy what they could afford, even if it wasn't as much as they got for free. It is a loss in revenue to the manufacturers to have so much product stolen.

Yet piracy is not hurting SBI, Sun fly, Mr. Entertainer, Priddis, or All-Star? How do all these companies remain current in production with both plastic discs AND download options? Anybody can answer...

For one, you don't know that they have not been hurt by it.

For two, Sound Choice was considered the best so it was the most pirated. People didn't have to pirate SBI if they had the whole SC Library.

For three, many of the brands you named got to operate under looser and less expensive UK/Canadian publishing rules which allowed downloads. Our stricter laws did not allow our US companies to compete fairly with the UK brands.

...Just a "IMHO Comment" but #1) They do offer downloads and #2) That most likely some of their tracks have been Pirated but they're content with their sales from those who legally purchase tracks from them at this point but that could change in the future. The reason I say this is because we've seen MANY Karaoke Manufacturers who have come and gone, for various reasons, over the years.

***Actually Leopard Lizard kind of posted something similar.

4) is Priddis didn't produce karaoke with graphics for quite some time and is only now re-entering that market. The lawsuits where everyone got sued over sync might have had something to do with it but it seems like they sat out a lot of the heavy pirate years and are just now getting back in.

5) SC going out of production probably threw a lot of business to SBI et al. I know I didn't start buying them until I needed current songs or ones that couldn't be done over here.

I found a couple Sound Choice discs at the flea market last weekend for a dollar each.

Getting back to three wasn't GEM licensed in the UK? Isn't that what got the U.S. publishers all in arms when SC used PR to circumvent U.S. copyright laws? That is probably why SC can't get permission from the publishers to make new product.

So you agree L&L that SC as a label is going out of production and is no longer a viable manu? As far as anything new you have to use other labels.

SC not a viable manu - hardly! No 'new' material, true, but i'm willing to bet that MOST shows don't use a whole lot from the last 5 years anyway. If I didn't have any new track from 2009 on (last SC disc) - I could still run a full show with little complaints about not having new stuff. Many places around this area don't update anything. I know 1 club that is ACHING for new music but the owner won't buy any - they only span up to 2003 - that is when I sold them their selection, it hasn't grown one song.

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

same here, some old music being sung all the time.
and why?
because there are no crazy vocal effects that the karaoke host can't duplicate in older music. the music now, unless you spend some money on autotune or voiceworks pro equipment you just can't get the crazy effects.

and if the singers can't sound like the original they don't sing it.

just listening to the radio now a days and it's all autotune corrected or autotune effects. country, rap, pop and urban everyone can sing in tune now and they don't even have to be good.

I just gave my korg digital recording station to my son-in-law for his band, it has pitch correction built into it. works for vocal and instruments.

heck at my karaoke I have an antares autotune avp-1 and we play with it, but most can't get use to hearing their own voice and hearing the corrected voice coming out of the speakers at the same time.

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It's all good!

Around here it's ALL newer music. I am always adding new country to the list. The only one that sings older stuff is ME.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

Newer country would be the exception, in which I usually went to CB for anyway so SC wasn't really a factor there ever for me anyway - although I do have a lot of SC country too but many of those discs were from bulk buys not specifically looking for those discs. Newer pop/rock seldom get sung as a rule, there is the occasional one hit wonder or flavor of the week artist that will get some play for a while, then dropped like a hot potato. Our shows age avg 21-45 - and the higher percentage of the music that gets done is 70's-90's rock/pop/metal. With the rest being newer country and rock/pop music (well except these last couple months have been a little heavier on the country as can be show in my 'most sung' thread but still very little in the way of 'newer radio hits'.

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

I have ONE guy that sings off what I have in Sound Choice. ONE! He sings off my RHCP disk and my Frank Sinatra disk. The rest sing country, which makes me want to tear our my beard. Plus I have one girl, who has an angelic voice, who brings her own stuff. BTW, none of her stuff is SC. She is no impressed with their stuff.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE