Karaoke Forums

What happens when you play a customers discs and you are being audited to prove you OWN that disc ?

Could this be a potential problem ?????

I usually announce, "This is so-and-so's private disc so you will not find this song in the book." Then I hand deliver their disc back to them as soon as I play it. Can't be much more obvious than that.

I asked the question obviously with all the hoopla of the SC investigations .. I mean how can you be sure

Stay safe. If it happens, buy the disk.

I would stay away from outside discs for that reason because I may not want the disc in my collection for reasons such as I already have every other song on the disc. I don't need to have fifty versions of "My Way" in my collection. Besides I don't want to forget the singer or tick off the next singer who thinks they are next because that's what's on my ticker.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

well, if we were disk based and played a customer disk, it would be fine. being computer based makes their disk no less accpetable to play. afaik you send SC a pdf of your book and the audit is done from there. i would guess it is done like that for just this reason.

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

One of the reasons why I like using the Hoster is that it will only keep it temporarily on the hard disk and when you finish playing it, it will delete it from the disk. I don't have to worry about it.

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Seize the day and SING!!!

They do not even go in my computer, they go in my player. Also make the announcement that it is not my disc.

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

just playing devils advocate ...

1st of all many singers don't bring in originals for fear of damages. They bring in BURNS. ( AT LEAST THEY DID WHEN I PLAYED CUSTOMER DISCS)

Maybe it's changed but the few times I had the request the singer had a burn in their hand. --- Is the KJ respsonsible for the legality of the customer disc ?

I spoke with SC and CB both about this last year and was told that if the disc you are playing was a burn than it was in my best interest to stay away from a burn because it opens me up to piracy since it is not the original and it is being played through my system in a public and I really don't know where they got the disc. Yes, I have been to everything from "I don't want my original to be ruined to my buddies made me a copy". I'll bet that most don't even own the originals anyway. I tell them that I use my originals and they hold up for many years (3 to 4 shows a week, 50 weeks a year on the average) and that I won't play burns period. If they push the issue I explain that there are issues with piracy II have a policy of no burns. My equipment, my liablilty.

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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!

A KJ usually keeps all of his CDG together in a container of some sort that protects his discs. An individual like myself only brings a few discs in with me at one time. Being a man, I don't carry a purse to put my discs in so they usually wind up in my back pocket and they have been accidentally sat on more than once. I went through the Sound Choice replacement routine a couple of times but it is a lot easier to make JUST ONE compilation disc with 15 songs that you like and carry that around with you. When you get tired of singing those songs; make a new disc with your NEW favorite songs to sing. If the KJ is that paranoid that he won't play your disc at his show; find another show that will.

I don't play customers discs burned or otherwise for a number of reasons, but having some 'investigator' from SC stroll in twards the end of some dude singing a SC song and jotting it down in his notepad is as good a reason as any.

You can announce whatever you want.. doesn't mean everyone is going to hear it.

Some might have been out on the patio smoking when you made the announcement.. or they could have been in the bathroom.. or maybe they weren't even in the club when you made the announcement.

Other times, they simply weren't paying any attention. They were wrapped up in whatever conversation they were having at the time and anything you were saying or playing might as well been white noise in the background.

I've also had people bring me thumb drives.. hey man.. i've got my MP3+G stuff on this thumb drive.

No way i'm sticking that in my production machine. No way.

Back to the question at hand.. i've still not seen anyone say how it is the Sound Choice investigators determine what specific songs you played violate their copyright.. and I suspect they may not list songs specifically.. they must just say you violated their copyright by displaying their logo in general.

I mean.. are they giving people a list and saying these are the songs we caught you playing? Or are they just saying, let us inspect your disc library and compare that to what is on your hard drive?

Seems to me that they'd HAVE to have a list of songs.. because if it's just 'you displayed our logo without authorization' then simply owning a single Sound Choice disc would give you that authorization.

Let's face it. The pirates know who they are and they know just how guilty they are. That is why so many of them just pay Sound Choice the money for the GEM series. It is the path of least resistance and a cost of doing business. They have been in business for years without making the investment in music that the legal KJ s had to make. Now they can afford to pay Sound Choice some money for using their products and move forward without worrying about getting caught any longer. Oh yeah; they get their Sound Choice songs for a fraction of what the legal KJ paid for theirs.

When you create your own CD+G tracks do you pay any SYNC license fees or anything else??????? I mean if it was OK to create and play publicly moonshine karaoke tracks why wouldn't everybody just do that ????????.....just sayin ?

Big difference in creating for your own use and creating for resale.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

OWN USE in a public karaoke show ? .... so if the singer does it OK but the KJ would be commercial use ? ..I guess I can see that

The biggie is "proper use". If I buy an instrumental track on Amazon, you can assume I am going to make use of that. If I sing it myself, I have probably made proper use. If I let a friend do it, pretty much the same. If I take money to provide KJ service, then use that track, you could argue that I am reselling it, but I don't see how it is that much different than buying a track online.

All of these are interpretations, of course, and not spelled out specifically in law. It's not really a question of fair use, but of use to purpose. If the songwriter licenses sale to Amazon, and receives a royalty, they have to expect it will be put to use. What exactly a proper use is and by who is hard to determine, but you would think that the purchaser singing to it would be a proper use of an instrumental-only track. So I feel pretty good about making these tracks and using one copy myself. If I sold them, or gave them away willy, it would be a different story.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Let's get real. The laws are vague, and SC can't even stop the selling of pirate hard drives being used by kjs. Nobody even knows who owns the rights to DK & many other brands. SC best method......scare tactics. I don't condone piracy, but someone making a copy from their purchased cdg, to use at a karaoke show is trivial, and possibly without merit.....no rulings, no cease and dessist, nothing on the books, no true stories.....just BS stories to scare you.....this is stretching things till they break...most kjs that dont play customers cds are just looking for an excuse not to play them......

I'm CERTAINLY NOT adding a Sound Choice LOGO to my HOMEMADE karaoke tracks so I doubt it very highly that a KJ would get in trouble for playing a track that I made at home for me and only me to sing. I also doubt it very much that Bruce Springsteen is going to find out about some guy singing some of his songs at a karaoke bar and try to sue me for singing "JUNGLELAND". Now if I started selling karaoke discs on the internet and I was making millions of dollars doing it; someone would probably come around looking for their piece of the action. I'm making songs to sing at a karaoke bar. I'm not a Hit Man or Public Enemy Number One for Heaven's sake. With all of the crap going on in the world; why would ANYONE be concerned with whatever song I might be singing on the weekends? Let's get REAL FOR JUST A MINUTE.

The reasons some KJ's won't play a customer's disc is because THEY JUST DON'T WANT TO BE BOTHERED.

Ding, ding, DING!

Give that person a CIGAR!

Or worse.... what if (and I do mean "what if?") it was the investigator that brought in a disc and you played it, gave it back and then got sued?

I have posed this exact scenario to Kurt at Sound Choice and never... ever... received a response.