Karaoke Forums

because they can. some may honestly be ignorant (unless they are on this particular forum they would not know about any of this is even going on) but most do because they can. the pirates get reported but SC has never done a thing about them. i know i am not alone in this, i doubt anyone here can trace anyone they reported to a lawsuit.

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens

Huh? Are you saying that it would only cost a total of $20 to get 50-100 SC song tracks to fill in some sort of gap if you already have a library that consists of SBI, Sunfly, and CB? I remember that when SC was doing Custom CDGs, they were charging $5 per song track ($75 for a full disc of 15 tracks). Based on that alone, you would need at least 7 discs to fill your 100 song gap, and that would cost you $500. That was years ago, and I don't know if their price ever changed, or if Clark Music (in the UK) was charging less. And how much did you compute the rest of that library to cost (SBI, Sunfly, and CB)? I have about 24 Custom Discs from SBI (each with 15 songs on them), and those discs cost me an average of $53 each (That's already almost $1300 for 360 songs.... nowhere near enough to expect to run a Karaoke show).

I know that All Star Karaoke offers $20 prepaid cards to purchase 45 custom tracks (which comes to about 44 cents per song), but the drawback is, IMO, their library doesn't have a large in selection, and the quality of their music is just OK. Now, if ASK had the same 360 songs that I got from SBI, that would have cost me about $155, but I would still need a lot more than just 360 songs. To have a decent Karaoke Library, you would probably need at least 3,000 songs to start with. Multiply my 360 songs by 10 (to get to that 3,000+ song library), that would still be costing me about $1,500. Someone once posted that they could have a perfect core library but together consisting of just 500 songs, but you have to really know the right songs to pick to be able to pull that off successfully.

You ask WHY would someone steal when it's so cheap to run a show legally now-a-days. Well, let's see... They're getting a fully loaded HD which contains over 100,000 songs (albeit at least two thirds of that is probably all duplicate song titles), and they're only paying about $300 - $500 for it. Meanwhile, I just quoted you about 3 times that cost just to have a little over 3,000 songs. You do the math.

Overpaying is NEVER a sound business move.

REMINDER: It is perfectly legal to buy and receive discs from overseas, be it the UK or Japan. Go for QUALITY and economy- it's there- and ASK isn't one of them.

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"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

Joe... you need to edit the first sentence of the quote you used from me. It came out all jumbled and doesn't make any sense.

Let me clarify. For $20 a month you get 25,000 songs to use, not own. After you look at the song list you (depending on you location and type of singers) you should find there are some serious gaps in popular songs. In that case you need only around 50-100 songs at the most, maybe less to fill the gap. Those may be SC or other brands, the idea is to have the songs economically purchased not stolen. SC is not the only manu to have those songs but SC does have some cool songs not made by other manus. ASK will cheaply fill new country and pop but they don't release everything needed (Newer ASK I think is very good quality compare "Pontoon" to any other brand, the older ASK I agree is lower quality) Party Tyme is releasing new songs too.

So to fill-in gaps of songs you need from Sound Choice you find the discs on eBay, there are lots of oop SC discs all the time showing up brand new so you don't have to pay $6 per song.

Why do you need (other than to just have)100,000 songs when the same 200-300 songs are sung over and over?

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If you don't have anything nice to say, say it sarcastically!
The Truth often gets in the way of a good story.
Record companies should make every song in a karaoke version and kill the dispute!

Where is a "KJ" going to access 25K songs for $20 a month? I thought the cloud was, like, $90-$100 ( haven't looked it up in a while so I am really asking).

If you own Virtual DJ it is $20 per month for karaoke cloud.

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If you don't have anything nice to say, say it sarcastically!
The Truth often gets in the way of a good story.
Record companies should make every song in a karaoke version and kill the dispute!

You had better take another look if you are making money producing a show commercially...

http://www.karaokecloudpro.com/

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-- Mark

That is only for home use. Commercial accounts are $99 a month for some time then $199 a month there after.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

As already pointed out, you are referring to the FOR HOME USE ONLY side of Karaoke Cloud. The subscription cost for Commercial use is $99 per month.

http://www.virtualdj.com/products/subscription.html
"WHY A CONTENT SUBSCRIPTION
cut down on your music expenses

Unlike regular consumers who buy their favorite music tracks one by one on iTunes or Beatport, DJs have very different needs:
When you work a gig, or even just practice at home, you need more than just your favorite top 20 tracks.
You need hundreds if not thousands of tracks, some of them you might play once or twice in your life and never see them again.
Obviously buying all of them is not a practical option.

That's why VirtualDJ offers you ContentUnlimited subscription plans.

Think of it as the Netflix of DJs.
For as low as $9.99 per month, you can play ANY song you want, from the millions available, without limits, as long as your subscription is active.
You can even download all the songs you want on your computer and play them in VirtualDJ without an Internet connection.

With a ContentUnlimited subscription, you will be able to face almost any request from your customers, even for songs you never heard about.
And you'll always have access to the latest tracks as soon as they get released, no matter where you are.

In order to bring you the best selection of high-quality music, video and karaoke, VirtualDJ has partnered with some of the most reliable content providers in the industry.
We are commited to ensuring that you get the best and latest content legally, while making sure the artists get compensated for their work.

KARAOKE PLAN
Available from VirtualDJ v7.4

Our karaoke plan gives you access to a catalog of more than 25,000 professional HD karaoke videos, with new hits added every month! Powered by KaraokeCloud.
The Catalog includes SBI, SunFly and DigiTrax (Chartbuster) songs

You can download our Karaoke Menu:
PDF XLS HTML (last updated on 2013-08-23)
The Karaoke Plan costs $19.99 per month."

I don't think anybody in their right mind would rent KC for $100 a month, that would price them out of any possible sales. Tricerasoft is less that $100 for a year and it has SBI and Sunfly! The only hitch is that it only works with Kjams which crashes a lot and is a very basic home made type program that is difficult to operate. If I was going to pay $1200 for one year of karaoke I would just buy the SC foundations and bricks, have much, much better quality and most of the go to songs you need, then buy the missing songs one at a time from ASK $20 for 45 songs...

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If you don't have anything nice to say, say it sarcastically!
The Truth often gets in the way of a good story.
Record companies should make every song in a karaoke version and kill the dispute!

You keep talking about this Virtual DJ. I found what I though was it, and ended up having to clean out my desktop of all kinds of malware. Do you have a legit link to this program??

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

Too good to be true. Sorry! NO legit company is going to offer music for commercial kj's for $9.99-20 per month.

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

Never mind. Got the link from your post. Thanks.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

The DJ service he is talking about is provided by Grooveshark. Here are the particulars:

Accessing any musical work for any purpose or in any manner other than Streaming is expressly prohibited. This license does not include any resale or commercial use of the Site, the Service, or its contents; any downloading or copying of account information for the benefit of another merchant. The Service is for the personal use of Users only and may not be used in connection with any commercial endeavors except those may be specifically endorsed or approved by the management of EMG from time to time. Use of any automated script, program, and or mechanism to collect, scrape, retrieve, and or gather any information and or User Content from the Service is strictly prohibited without written consent for EMG.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

I am amazed at how short your memories are concerning the topic of home-use vs commercial-use. It baffles me as to why this is constantly being put forth by some as a roadblock.

Kjs, DJs, VJs, and Cover Bands all work with media (music) that is all meant for home use only. That's right, all CDs, all music videos, and all karaoke songs, (and even sheet music) that are produced and sold to the public are for home use only. Unless you personally wrote the song or own the copyright or performance rights to that song you can not put on a public performance to that or any song without obtaining the right to do so. There are agencies who have the right to authorize public performance (commercial use) of your library of personal/home-use music for a fee (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC in the USA) and when the venue you play at has paid the fee, your home-use only media is magically transformed into commercial-use media while at that venue.

Every single retailer of music will have a disclaimer stating the product they sell to you is for home-use or personal-use only. That is how they protect themselves from giving you the wrong impression that you can use the product in a public performance without any further authorization.

The companies that offer both a home-use labeled product and a product labeled for commercial use will give the same disclaimer on the product meant for "commercial use" because you still will need the authorization for public performance on either product. The difference of the one labeled for "commercial use" is the quality of the product. It is not a "commercial use" approved product, it is a "commercial grade" product that you could be proud to play publicly when you get the additional licensing through the venue you proudly play at. Their "home-grade" product is of a lesser quality that you may not be so proud to put on display as a professional.
These are simple things that a professional in the business should understand.

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KNOW THYSELF

So then Spotify, which states that is for personal home use only, can be used in a venue that pays their pro fees??

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

It depends.
That question would be best answered by a representative of ASCAP, BMI, SESAC.
Those organizations don't cover every artist or every source without extra fees.
Different tv channels cost more for playing in a public venue for example.
However, if you play a song from spotify in your venue and confine your publicly aired content to strictly music and artists that are covered through the pro fees, you should be fine as far as the copyright holder is concerned.
Your problem would be with spotify and what you agreed to when you "borrowed" their service. You do make specific agreements with spotify when you license their service. The difference is they don't just say "home use only", they specifically forbid any commercial use with certain exceptions. They can of course, terminate your account if they don't like the way you utilize it.
Most of this is common sense, don't display anything owned by someone else (logos, voices, tunes, jingles, pictures) in public without the right people getting their royalties.

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KNOW THYSELF

The reason they say home personal use is because they do not pay sesac, bmi and ascap. If those fees are paid you can play any paid for media subscription, spotify, rhapsody, iTunes, whatever.

Just like when SC says not for public performance on the disc, that means that they did not pay the public licensing for you.

If your company offers streaming products for any amount of money the chances it will be used by professionals are huge. Also if you play music as a DJ you are promoting the music ie. PROMO ONLY which sells music and videos to me because I promote artist's to the public, but they do not sell the the public.

$20 a month is all it is worth for KC period! You have to be sure to have a fast internet and plan on using 3GB or more in a months time, that's another $30 for the internet MI-FI. So to use the $20 plan cost's you $50 all together.

The Karaoke Channel is the same, they don't grant you the permission but you can pay for it. They also sell the out of print songs that SC is in trouble for, in the EMI suit. They are also out of the country, not! They say they are from Canada but the karaoke channel DNS IP trace directs to The USA. http://network-tools.com/default.asp?prog=express&host=www.thekaraokechannel.com

I would wager that it's the Slep boys trying to pull the wool over on the music boys, AGAIN!

All this about piracy and the biggest looser (THIEF) is SC.
http://karaokecloud.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/kurt-slep-outlines-the-history-of-pirated-karaoke

What a riveting performance by Kurt! If you want to turn someone in let's just start at the top and work our way down.

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If you don't have anything nice to say, say it sarcastically!
The Truth often gets in the way of a good story.
Record companies should make every song in a karaoke version and kill the dispute!

Direct quote, Cue- YOU edit it, as you have others.....

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"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."