Karaoke Forums

By the same token is it fair or just that the KJ's have to take the whole fall, for the actions of the home user abuser? Especially since most of the KJ's are little guys trying to eek out a small income, that keeps getting smaller every year.

If I get popped for pirating material, I'm not going to say, "How come someone else got away with stealing but I didn't?"

This isn't a zero sum game. When SC and other companies go after pirates, they're also helping the rest of us not have to compete with them. I'm spending a lot of money trying to keep up with free karaoke shows with nearly unlimited libraries, and I'll make a wild-assed guess that those people didn't pay for 50,000 or 75,000 songs. The home users may be harder to catch, but I also don't have to compete with them unfairly.

If it weren't for the pirates, the rest of us would have better margin, so I don't look at SCs emphasis on pirates as being a special onus on KJs.

The question is just how effective PEP's approach has been to combating piracy? After 7 years of effort the number of illegal shows has increased according to their own figures, not decreased. When you factor in the economy which none us control, and the number of venues dropping karaoke for various reasons, it would seem their efforts haven't really accomplished much at all.

Then you better take another look and rethink that. When SC goes after pirates, they don't put them out of business. They do 1 of the following:
1. Make them customers, by making them license the GEM series.
2. Make them purchase a HELP license.
3. Have the Court order them to delete all of their SC tracks (and also make them pay a fine).
4. Go out of business (and make them pay a fine too).

Most of them opt for choice Number 1 or 2, so you're still competing with those same pirates. So, how are they helping????????

They are only combating piracy of their own product, nothing more.

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That would only be true ... if they actually had product. They really don't (anymore). All they have is a trademark. "Their own product" was sold off to Stingray almost 10 years ago.

And as far as "reasonable numbers" or anything else like that is concerned, one only has had to be in the business for a substantial time to "know" what numbers really represent. People like Lonnie, Harryoke, Cueball who have been around this for 20 or more years.

Back in 1997, with the advent of Goldenhawk cd duplication software and "Disc Juggler", I suggested (more than once) that manufacturer's should boost the price of their products to put them out of range of home users thereby ensure that the product went only to professionals (with other requirements and restrictions too). That idea was shot down pretty darn quick and for a good (economic) reason.

Tom Viveros of Stellar Records explained at that time --- almost 20 years ago --- why manufacturers were so interested in selling to a home market. In a nutshell, and paraphrasing, he said that; "It's simple; home consumers overall purchase far more discs than KJ's do. However, KJ's purchase more discs at one time and have larger collections than home users, BUT there are far fewer of them."

It's a numbers game and not rocket science. It doesn't take a formula to figure it out either. Just take a look at the current demands of KJ's these days: They want to purchase on an ala-carte basis AND they don't want to spend more than 1 or 2 bucks maximum for the latest/greatest tracks with superb sounding audio and dead-on sweeps and deliver on-demand downloads.

Would you want to be a supplier with those constraints these days?
(There is only one reason to do so, but that's a whole different story.)

Fair enough, but wouldn't we all be better off if every content producer were doing something similar? If clubs that hire pirate KJs were getting hit from all sides, we wouldn't be competing with as many of them.

Not so.
Demand for karaoke continues to grow.
The Singing Machine sells 1 million karaoke machines per year (all of which must be fed with music) at a net sales of 48.9 million dollars this year alone. Stingray Digital boasts of 400 million pay per view subscribers worldwide. New karaoke versions of songs are created by producers on a daily basis.
This vast demand in the home consumer market fuels the demand in the public entertainment market.

Here's a link: http://satprnews.com/2016/11/21/stingra ... -holidays/

When a venue owner successfully exploits that demand, onlooking venue owners seek to replicate that success for themselves.
Since a karaoke show is a commodity limited by the time constraints of the number of songs that can be performed in a single show, there will be an increasing overflow of singers that will seek venues that can fit them in to sing which will foster competition.

The technology has continued to advance over the past thirty years and the means to operate and maintain a karaoke sing-along is no longer a mystery to the masses. We are nearing a point where the technologically competent are almost born that way, and some of the equipment that is being sold as toys for the children these days can out perform most of the stuff the pioneers in the industry started out with at a much lower price.
The days of paying someone a high price for their mysterious organizational cd purchasing and playing skills because a karaoke offering itself would bring in loyal crowds are nearing their end.
Neither suing operators into paying fees to stay in business, nor suing them to leave the business will stem the tide of the endless supply of those who can and will easily enter the business.
It will be doing the things that others can't or won't do that will have the greatest impact on ability to compete at a level that is worth competing for.

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Yes the times they are a changing.