Karaoke Karisma Blog With KJ Toqer

November 21, 2007 at 1:04 PM | Posted by kjtoqer

So a lot of you KJ's are probably scratching your heads wondering what ol' toq means by this statement. Let me explain. If you look at where the karaoke market is in it's entirety, it closely resembles that of the plain music market 10 years ago. Let's flashback 10 years.

Ten years ago was when the first P2P applications began to emerge. Napster was at the height of its popularity. We started seeing brick and mortar music stores close up shop. Every label in existence was trying to squash what seemed like a rampant, undulating tide of piracy. Fast-forward to the present.

Napster got shutdown (only to be reborn as a legitimate subscription service) Labels are slowly getting used to the idea that there is money in digital downloads. iTunes and the iPod did a lot to change the labels perception that digital media was evil. While the music labels have made the switch to digital media, the majority of karaoke publishers have not. The same fair-use arguments we heard 10 years ago when it came to MP3's are starting to resurface again, with mostly American karaoke labels leading the charge to keep us in the dark ages of karaoke technology.

At the forefront of this battle in America is the Karaoke Anti-piracy Agency (K.A.P.A). http://www.karaokeantipiracyagency.com/ <http://www.karaokeantipiracyagency.com/> . KAPA is the amalgamation of several US based karaoke labels. Their mission, sue any KJ using a PC and try to have PC based karaoke obliterated. It doesn't matter if a KJ is only using karaoke they have original disks for, or if they're pirating tens of thousands of songs. They're the same in KAPA's eyes. KAPA would like to see us all back on CDG's, buying disks through their old distribution chains and buying hardware from companies in which they hold an active interest.

The funny thing is, some of the members of the KAPA agency do indeed have some form of digital karaoke, but if you're familiar with the term "Vendor lock in" you already know what the score is. Basically the KAPA members that support digital karaoke want you to buy their proprietary formats, on their proprietary hardware. You would think they would have taken a hint from what the labels went through 10 years ago, but they do not.

The stance taken by KAPA is a very stark contrast to what major UK labels have decided to do. Zoom karaoke was one of the first to start offering digital downloads of it's catalog in standard MP3+G format. The tracks are on par with even the best American karaoke label (we all know who that is right?).

Following in Zooms footsteps is SBI karaoke, another UK based karaoke producers. They too have started publishing and selling their song catalog online.

There are other companies starting to sell karaoke online as well. From this KJ's perspective, there is nothing more satisfying than being able to tell a customers "I don't have your song, but I can download it for $1.99." Most of the time I add a dollar markup, and keep the extra buck for myself. This is my incentive to not pirate. For every song I don't own, I can make a buck. Considering there are probably 1000's of songs I don't own, and 1000's of new songs coming out every year, I don't think I'll ever have to worry about running out of songs people want to buy for my collection.

So I don't pirate a thing, and I make an extra few bucks from it each night. Go me for doing the right thing.

I think this concept will catch on in many KJ'ing markets. I know for a fact that some software companies are currently trying to work with these publishers to make these types of purchases with KJ markup even easier to implement.

Now before any American karaoke company accuses me of "Not knowing what the situation is" let me tell you this:
I've talked to many of you on the phone, at NAMM, in e-mails.
The situation is the whole "Sync License" issue, where karaoke is considered an "audiovisual" work like a movie, making distribution and licensing a whole lot messier.

So bearing in mind that toqer does understand the situation and grasp what's going on in its entirety, let me make a suggestion to the karaoke companies: Instead of treating your users like criminals and starting an organization like KAPA, why don't you take all that money and effort to congress? Have them change copyright so that CDG or any kind of karaoke is in the same category as regular music.

Let me paint out a few scenarios of how this can all play out.

Scenario A:
US karaoke publishers decide to fight the tide of import digital karaoke. This will never happen. There are several issues that will make this impossible for you. Net Neutrality is the first thing that will prevent it.

Net Neutrality is the idea that Internet traffic should flow freely, and it's up to the destination user how that traffic should be filtered. The US could setup firewalls to block all imported digital karaoke but it will never happen. In this country, freedom of speech and freedom of information are constitutionally protected.

The other problem with fighting import digital karaoke is jurisdiction. While you might be able to knock down a fellow American company willing to take the chance on selling digital karaoke, those same laws you used in that situation won't apply to an overseas company. You will never be able to convince the out of US companies to filter out American IP traffic. It's very simple for them to do so, but it will never happen.

Scenario B:
US karaoke publishers decide to go for digital karaoke sales. U.S. companies decide to band together and just start selling stuff online. KAPA gets a new mission statement supporting digital downloads and ripping purchased media to a hard drive. Each KAPA member contributes to a "Lobbying/Defense" fund in case some music label gets a hair up their ass and decides to sue them. KAPA begins lobbying congress to update the copyright laws so that karaoke isn't grouped into the same category as movies.

With either scenario being played out within the next year or two, it's going to be interesting to see what choice the US karaoke companies decide to go with. Either way, it's going to be a long uphill battle for them.

If they go with Scenario A, they can count on losing the support of their customers. Import karaoke wins. If they go with Scenario B, I'm sure every single customer will support them, not only by just purchasing songs but in every imaginable way possible including writing their congress, and donating money to the KAPA agency.

As I said earlier, right now I have a viable financial incentive to not pirate karaoke in my collection. If the U.S. karaoke producers really want to squash karaoke piracy, they need to look into this instead of putting the blame on the digital portion of the karaoke scene. You can't force people to stop pirating. For the majority of karaoke pirates, money is the #1 factor in steering them towards a life of stealing tracks.

So draw on what motivates them to pirate, and use it for your benefit. Use them to your benefit. Offer us the same choice to do the right thing that import karaoke companies have. Otherwise you're going to see even more sales lost to import karaoke.

KARAOKE IS HARDCORE!!!
--toqer