Karaoke Forums

Hi, I just found out that I am not blocked from Zoom's website anymore. Anyone else able to get through??

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

Are you able to buy disks from them?

I got an email from Mr. Entertainer saying they won't ship to north America.

I'm not blocked either, I can get on Sunfly and Mr. Entertainer also, but I haven't tried ordering yet.

I bought two songs, without a problem.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

I don't buy disks. I buy single songs.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

What did you check when asked if Canada or USA Residency?

I didn't have to. I already had an account, from before the ban. They know I am in the US.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

Huh! No, I'm still blocked

More precisely, I can log in despite the red warning message, put something in the cart, but it won't let me check out without re-entering my billing address. The problem with that is "United States" is greyed out on the drop-down menu for country, and annotated as unavailable.

Oh well.

I do not get the pop up from SBI stating certain songs are blocked from certain areas - although with their new format of disc or custom CDG it doesn't matter, what is available for download is available, and what is available on cdg only is still restricted from US purchase.

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

nope, the window has closed.

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

Went back this morning to purchase some music and now I'm getting blocked . I should have bought yesterday when I could get in. Not sure why it let me in yesterday but not today.

If you can't buy directly from the manu, you CAN buy UK manu discs from http://www.kingsbridgekaraoke.co.uk/catalog/ or https://www.amazon.co.uk/

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

Kingsbridge and some Ebay sellers. That's where I'm getting zooms and MRE from.
Edit: Sometimes Amazon as well.

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Purple Frog Karaoke Cuz we all feel odd and love to "croak"

Rotten turd herders locked me out, again!! So tired of this crap!!

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

Thanks for the tip, Lonman. Not having logged into SBI for a month or two I had to check out the new website after you mentioned this, and bought a few downloads just to be sure I still could. This site improves every year and the shopping is now the easiest and quickest it's ever been.

Now I only bought downloads, but does anyone know if they'll still ship a custom disc to the US, or might that be dependent on what tracks are ordered?

In case anyone didn't know, Sunfly tracks are available there (12,500 of them) even though the Sunfly site itself is blocked from the US. But it seems only to be the tracks it would be legal to sell here -- I think they filtered out all the "no fly" tracks.

As for Zoom discs, a big yes to Amazon.uk. I loaded up on some of the Platinum Artists discs I'd never gotten around to buying, and for only about 4.50 US dollars each! And I don't know how they pulled this off but they arrived within 48 hours - made me suspect they already have the stock on this side of the pond.

I believe that is why the website change. What they still can sell (even though they probably aren't supposed to) to the US is available on download. Anything they cannot sell to US is available on disc - which that option is not available to the US.



Depends on how old the Zoom discs are, they were allowed to sell over here at one time and many retailers stocked up before the block and still sell the product - although I can imagine the pool is drying up since it's been a few years now. Newer Zoom discs (or any UK manu) after the date (can't remember exactly) aren't allowed to be sold directly in the US anymore.

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

A brief summary of the rules for UK licensing:

(1) Downloads and physical media are the subject of separate licenses.

(2) Both the downloads and physical media licenses prohibit direct sale to the U.S. That ends the inquiry for downloads; you can't legally purchase a UK-licensed download in the US. (If a UK producer gets US licensing, then that would of course be legal.)

(3) Physical media can, however, be sold to U.S. customers as long as the original place of sale is in a covered territory (generally, the UK, although while the UK is still a member of the EU, anywhere in the EU will do). This means that a UK company can legally purchase discs in the UK and sell them to US customers. It also means that you can go to the UK, buy discs, and--subject to customs duties, if any--bring them into the US.

(4) What is unclear at this point is whether the producer can directly sell a physical product to a US customer without an intermediary. One school of thought says that if the sale is "FOB" in the UK (i.e., title passes to the customer in the UK), then it's legal. Another school of thought says that FOB in the UK is irrelevant unless the customer is physically in the UK to take possession. It would be up to the producer to decide whether to take that risk.

What confuses the heck out of me is this......
If I buy a physical disk from the UK, then one would assume that the licensing fees were paid and the artist got paid and the consumer has the physical product in hand. Why should it make any difference where my copy came from geographically if the artist or copyright holders got paid??????????? Since we are a global economy why the heck can't we get the copyright issue modernized?

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Purple Frog Karaoke Cuz we all feel odd and love to "croak"

The issue is that economically it's very similar to pharmaceuticals.

In the U.S., we have a largely unregulated market. Each music publisher--and there are thousands--handles its own licensing and sets its own pricing.

In the UK, there is central licensing authority that sets prices and procedures. Publishers can opt out if they want, but most don't. As a result, it is much cheaper and easier to get licenses for karaoke tracks in the UK.

Before 2010, the UK authority was able to issue worldwide licenses for physical goods. (Their download licenses were more limited.) As a result, licensees were able to exploit the price and effort difference by licensing in the UK. The music publishers preferred to be able to charge higher prices to the lucrative American market and to have more control over licensing, so they took steps to remove the U.S. and Canada from the scope of the UK licensing scheme.

This is virtually the same as when people used to go to Canada to buy pharmaceuticals at drastic discounts compared to the US market.

The thing that allows physical goods to be brought into the US is the Supreme Court's holding in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley, which said that as long as the item was originally sold lawfully in the country of origin, the U.S. First Sale Doctrine applies and that item can be brought in. Obviously anytime there is a "download," you are making a copy, so the First Sale Doctrine does not apply.

Why can't we get this modernized? It would require an act of Congress, and that's difficult in the present political environment. Moreover, the music publishers have great lobbyists and are opposed to any changes to the present system that don't favor them.

Some should start a third party system in the UK. We send them the order for custom disc, they then submit and receive order then forward on to US customer 2nd hand.

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