Karaoke Forums

I don't understand why everyone cares about SC investigators and whatever. If one did come through and hit every venue in your town, wouldn't that put the pirate KJs out of business, and take price pressure and show competition off legal KJs? Isn't that good for us? Shouldn't we be thinking, man, I wish SC would come to town and bust the 10 pirate shows within 10 miles of me, so there are fewer shows for customers to choose from?

I really don't understand why folks are always up in arms about this on the forum.

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

Jeff, I too have watched these discussions with absolute amazement. Just a few months ago, the same people were complaining about SC and the others NOT doing anything about the piracy, now that they are, the SAME people are complaining and criticizing their efforts, go figure???

tbreen

"I see Pirate People"

I think the paranoia centers around the ambiguity of the process and the inconsistency Sound Choice has shown in their policies, specifically the 1 to 1 concept. Sound Choice, reasonably so, does not make it clear what criteria they use to determine that a KJ has pirated tracks. Some here seem to be worried that they'll get falsely accused because of the limited amount of information that SC can gather using these apparently anonymous tactics. I don't know how legitimate these concerns really are.

Sound Choice's inconsistency toward piracy I think is the bigger concern for most here though. There's been a lot of speculation, rumor and mis-information out there along with some about face changes to SC's approach to what they consider piracy. Originally SC did not believe in 1 to 1, then they published information that made it appear they did, then they retracted and now they've basically said they'll tolerate it without ever coming right out and saying it's legal or not. So many folks who have a 1 to 1 library are concerned they could change their minds and suddenly those libraries would be considered violations. Sound choice also has a habit of biting the hand that feeds them. Instead of working in cooperation with KJ's, you know the ones that buy the bulk of their CD's, they've long worked against us. Every so often they'll try to buddy up to KJ's only to turn around and once again start treating us like they'd prefer we just didn't exist. I believe that leads a lot of folks here to distrust SC which further feeds the paranoia.

Honestly what we need, and it's been talked about before, is a true association of KJ's started by KJ's for KJ's. This would give us the ability to police our own ranks and work with all of the manufacturers (not just SC) to stamp out piracy. The nice added bonus it would also give us bargaining power with the manu's and our venues to help better our wages, improve technology for the services we provide and ultimately build the karaoke entertainment industry.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

I hear what you're saying about the format shift confusion, etc. but does anyone really think that Sound Choice is going to go after someone who is willing to show their discs and prove they paid for the songs?

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

There is and org that you might look to: ADJA/AKJA www.adja.org

It is for DJs and KJs run by DJs and KJs. We follow a code of conduct that spells out what is expected as a member.

As far as policing ourselves, know of a pirate, report the pirate to the manus. Chances are they probably already know of them if it's in a market that thet have been investigating.

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No venue to big or too small. From your den to the local club or event, we have the music most requested. Great sounding system!

I don't know if squashing every pirate in the world would drive the prices legit KJ's can get for shows.

Carls Tavern in Hoboken, NJ that seats 40 people max is only going to be able to pay X amount of dollars for his Thursday entertainment.

That's it.

It isn't a case of pirates setting the price low.. it's a case of Carl only seats 40 people, and can only sell so much booze in an hour, and the amount of money he makes determines the maximum he can pay entertainment.

Now the SoundChoice dude mentions this.. he calls it 'over saturation'.. alluding to the fact that Carls Tavern doesn't have any business having karaoke in the first place.. and that if Carls Tavern didn't have karaoke Thursday nights, then patrons would end up down the road at the larger (presumably legit) karaoke venue.

You can get a pretty nice collection of karaoke music by scoring the Sweet Georgia Brown set for under $100.. that gives you like 2,000 songs. Load up on a few other collections like that plus start picking up the top hits discs and you can build a pretty respectable collection on the cheap.

I'll bet you could put a pretty respectable catalog together for under $600.

Not a lot more than what the pirates are paying for those loaded drives.

I'm in no way, shape, or form advocating piracy here.. i'm simply saying that squashing pirates isn't the magic bullet that will mean all KJ's will get $500 a night for bar gigs and jobs will be plenty for all.

The reason being is that SC appears to just go out and find a KJ and then put them over the rack to see if ALL of their songs are legit with the cds. A single misplaced cd could get you in big trouble if it is on your song list.

The investigators seem to draw no distinction between a KJ with 1 song that may be pirated out of 10,000 in a KJ's book and another KJ that has all 20,000 in their book every single one of them pirated.

Of course to find that 1 song in 10,000 they will have to thouroughly investigate the KJ, and that in itself is way to intrusive in my view.

I'm not saying it's going to get anyone $500 a night, but in my area, about 2/3rds of karaoke shows, and virtually all DJs, are pirates. If those guys evaporated, I would not struggle to make $250 for two nights. I'm really good at this, and I have better equipment than anyone in town; but there are a lot of guys out there willing to do it for $50-$100/night. If I didn't have to compete with those pirates, the singers would have fewer choices for venues, which means the best KJs would have the shows and the money.

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

I second that.

absolutely! i'd be in.

to the original question, also there is the point discussed to the extent of that SC has come after KJ's but has except for only one instance that i am aware of (there may be more that i have missed) they have ignored those SELLING the drives. they are allowed to continue selling, SC continues sueing, and it gets the appearance of SC taking advantage of the situation to get easy money. sacre the hosts, sell a gem series at a fraction of what we have all spent on our libraries, move on to the next host that creep sold a drive to. instead of attacking the source of the drives. any legitimate hosts that get caught up in the mess by accident are more like collateral damage. at least thats my concerns on it, i can't speak for anyone else.

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

another thought, i have concidered joining POOP on more than one occasion, just to be able to say to a venue "i am a member", but unless the venues are being educated as well, no association would mean anything to them. perhaps we can start by educating the venues. organizing something this large is way past MY abilities, but i would definately be willing to help as much as possible.

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

1) There is absolutely no evidence that SC has put ANY pirate out of business, nor caused them to raise prices.

2) What DOES happen is that SC's actions become known to the venues, and many just say screw karaoke, we just don't need the hassle.

3) Of the big three, it's SC that operates unethically, causing problems for KJs with absolutely no investigation, basing suits on nothing more than logos displayed.

4) While SC claims that hosts that are 1:1 won't have a problem, the fact is that these hosts- innocent or not- have their names muddied, their venues hassled, and their time ( which = money) wasted if theybother to try to prove innocence- in a country where innocence is assumed unless proven guilty.

5) The SC cases, if one is smart enough to get legal counsel to look them up, are without merit. All a host has to do is show up with a list of the hundreds of tracks released by SC without permission ( Which means that the logo is illegally attached, and therefore not legally THERE), to show that it's habitual, and any trademark infringement case goes down the tubes. You'll notice that though it's been almost 2 years, not a single court case has been scheduled.

If SC goes to court and loses ( which they will) their whole "income through coercien" bit is history.

Those are just a few of the reasons.

Keep in mind that I am Mfr's disc based, and have no personal worries. However, they are doing serious damage in regard to venues in my area, while providing absolutely no effect in regard to piracy.

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

Any 'legitimate' host that thinks they are getting a library of 25, 50, 100K songs for only a couple hundred bucks is pretty naive to begin with.

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

Well.. the thing that jumps out at me, and Joe above mentions it.. is club owners saying to hell with it, it just isn't worth their time.

How is a club owner supposed to know if a host is legit? Based on the size of his catalog? Is it based on how much the KJ charges? Is the club owner supposed to inspect the KJ's catalog and check it against physical discs?

It reminds me of about 10 years ago when the ASCAP/BMI people started swinging their big justice stick at clubs that booked live bands.

Something about having a band play music was different than having a DJ or Jukebox.

What that resulted in was having several of the clubs say piss on having live bands all together.. mostly because having live bands wasn't exactly the cash cow it used to be.. and it simply wasn't worth the hassle or effort.

Same for karaoke. Things have changed quite a bit from what i'd consider to be the 'peak' back 12 to 15 years ago.

Even today, my shows are only about 60% or so karaoke, the rest of the night is playing DJ music.. that's down from just a few years ago when I MIGHT be able to slip in two our three dance songs a night.

If I had to rely solely on my karaoke disc collection, i'd be out of the karaoke biz all together.

It's not hard for me to imagine many club owners just saying to hell with it.. and just going with straight DJ.

I guess i'm not convinced saturation is what is driving prices down.. I think it's just a case of decreased demand.

Most club owners know when it comes to DJ or KJ, regardless of the size of their catalog, it all comes down to the personality and the show.

You get what you pay for.

Finally someone with a perspective. You are 100% correct, although that would spell demise for many.


And to answer the thread authors' simple question. There is no big money or hugh profits to be made off of honesty. The slepps alone would lose thousands a year in easy money, the close to defunt KIAA, would lose money, no membership dues, simply put, no money in honesty. We don't worry about the "SC Investigators", we worry about their shoddy tactics, and guilty untill proven innocent castopo type tactics. Ah...yes, all's well in karaokeland.

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Sweet Little Me In Karaokeland........

CASTOPO ????? You must have been a History Major.

Well, I guess if they don't actually put any pirates out of business, that makes me sad. I was looking forward to the day when they came to my area and shut down a bunch of shows.

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

OUT OF BUSINESS KJ's don't have an incentive to PAY Sound Choice a penny. Sound Choice doesn't want to put the hard drive sellers out of business either. Those people just create more pirates for Sound Choice to cash in on.

Hard drive seller gets his five hundred from the pirate first and then gives up pirate to Sound Choice to save his own behind and then Sound Choice gets their 6 grand from the pirate and everyone is happy except for the 100% legitimate KJ.

OH WELL, THAT'S LIFE

Are you suggesting that SC promotes pirate hard drives?

I normally reserve judgment and refrain from name calling, but that's the stupidest thing I ever heard. What's next? NASA faked the moon landing?