KIAA (Karaoke Industry Alliance of America) joins in helping Karaoke community!

Advisory Board members of the Karaoke Industry Alliance of America traveled from across the United States to serve as judges at the finals of the Chicagoland Karaoke Olympics.  Sound Choice President, Derek Slep from North Carolina, Stellar Records President Tom Viveiros from Massachusetts, Stellar Vice President Tony Walstra from Connecticut, and US Karaoke Alliance President, Eric Godfrey from Arizona all traveled to the south side of Chicago to a club called Trio in Palos Heights, IL for the crowning of Chicago’s Karaoke Olympics medalists.

1^st Place Winner Kristen D’Andrea of Orland Park IL won $5,000 cash with her renditions of I’ll Be There by Mariah Carey and No One by Alicia Keys.   She worked the crowd into a feverish pitch with her performances.  2^nd Place Winner Don Grillo of Countryside IL won a complete DJ / Karaoke Rig with Sound Choice and Pop Hits Monthly Library, worth over $6,000 with his performances of Piano Man by Billy Joel and At this Moment by Billy Vera and the Beaters.  3^rd prize was won by Hard Rocker, Kevin Benson of Indian Head Park IL and included a Budweiser Prize Pack and $1,250 worth of Pop Hits Monthly Discs with Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy by Big and Rich and Plush by Stone Temple Pilots.  A crowd of over 400 packed the club for the entire event.  The Karaoke Olympic Finals was the climax to 12 weeks of qualifying and then club finals and wild card semi-finals.  The even was co sponsored by SingChicago.com, Nitelife.org and www.chiliskaraoke.com.  The host and MC for the event was Ron Larson, owner of Chili’s Karaoke.

KIAA board members used the event to help the local Karaoke community and pitched very expensive disc collections as prizes.

Sound Choice joins efforts of US Karaoke Alliance!

USKA President Eric Godfrey, will be the moderator for the Karaoke forum at the show and Mr. Slep will join him at that event to field questions from Karaoke companies and Karaoke enthusiasts.

Sound Choice has been leading in the efforts to fix the karaoke problems in the Karaoke world for years now.  In years past they have contributed prizes and a great deal of money in sponsoring national karaoke contests.  In recent years as sales have plummeted due to piracy, they are no longer in a position to give back to the community, but they are working to do all they can to improve the climate.  Sound Choice is now joining forces with the US Karaoke Alliance which is taking steps to help Karaoke Jockeys, Karaoke manufacturers and is allowing all disc manufacturers free membership in its group.

Currently the US Karaoke Alliance sponsors Karaoke2Night.com, FindKaraokeBars.com and WeSingKaraoke.com as sites to help KJ’s to advertise their services and their venues.  USKA Members get discounted rates on premier listings on these pages; however any company wanting to advertise is eligible for a free listing.

Digital Karaoke, Copyrights, and the Disc Manufacturers

My last post had a response from Bill Smith who stated,

“SoundChoice and Chartbuster came out and stated that they have no problems with a one for one copy of a legally purchased disc, I think I would be moved to initiate that. I also believe it would clear the air one and for all.”

Bill said he was looking for some clarity.

Let me explain the problem a step farther. Stellar Records (Pop Hits), Chartbuster, and SoundChoice have all been sued repeatedly (and some still have pending lawsuits) by various music publishers. Since they are the only pockets deep enough to go after they keep getting hit. The problem is that Karaoke has never been specifically addressed. There is a rule allowing anyone to put out a remake of a song and sell it. The section of the law defines a procedure for what is called “compulsories”. In the early days all the Karaoke companies (the ones trying to be legal) were paying these fees and registering their songs. However, since CDG’s combined active graphics the publishers pointed to a section of the Copyright law stating that it was combining the music and a visual production and thus did not qualify as a “phonograph” recording and compulsories did not apply…? This was the beginning of the end of many Karaoke disc companies. They now must get a compulsory license and for lack of a better term a “Karaoke sync” license. They must get every writer, composer, performer and publisher to agree to allow the track and after that negotiate a contract with each one prior to releasing the track.

The problem is this. SoundChoice, Chartbuster, Stellar etc, get the license and it is defined as for use on the particular Karaoke CDG and it has an expiration date. It is not in the scope of their license to tell you that you can make a copy of the disc in digital format. If they say you can do so, they open themselves up to more lawsuits. There is a great deal of disagreement among the remaining companies as to how this needs to be handled, but the bottom line is they all understand technology and acknowledge that digital copies are going to happen.. They have agreed that as long as you have 1 for 1 copies of the original for every show you do that they will not pursue any course of action. This is the same as with DJ’s using digital tracks and what the RIAA has stated.

After years of very intense discussion and quite a bit of animosity I was able to get Bill Becker, current General Manager of Sound Choice to release this press release: http://www.uskaraokealliance.com/images/SoundChoiceKaraokePressRelease9-08.pdf.  Bill and Sound Choice have been more than reasonable to deal with of late and they are trying to move forward proactively.

However, they can not state it is okay to go digital as it would put them in legal jeopardy, but they have stated that if you have one for one copies for every set of gear that they will not come after you.

So the answer is once again, that we all live in the gray area as digital DJ’s always have and that until it is addressed SPECIFICALLY, there is no hard and set rule. SoundChoice has discussed it with me and the USKA can act as an intermediary for a KJ member and negotiate a way to pay for license certificates for digital content that you do not have discs to support. We have spoken to Chartbuster and Stellar and they are both working on similar programs, but theirs’ are not in place yet.

If we can get even a small portion of the people to pay to make their illegal copies legal this will create a revenue stream for the disc manufacturers and help them to survive and hopefully as we police our own industry we can bust a few people and create awareness that gets the ball rolling.

See http://www.uskaraokealliance.com/Karaoke_Legal_Talk.htm for more info on all of this.

Why is Piracy a problem for Karaoke?

Hey everyone! Before getting started, I am new to this blog and new to blogging altogether so please bear with me.

I am Eric Godfrey,  President of the US Karaoke Alliance www.USKaraokeAlliance.com. I am owner of Starz Entertainment, (www.StarzEntertainment.net) and Starz Karaoke (www.StarzKaraoke.com). We do about 600 to 700 Karaoke shows per year in bars and clubs and about 50 more private shows.

We are going to be addressing all issues Karaoke on this blog and will deal with any aspects you want to deal with. So all that said let’s touch on this topic which is Why is Piracy a problem for Karaoke?

With the development of computer technology, copying of discs was available then later ripping of songs and playing of songs from hard drives. I am an advocate of this as a trained computer engineer. There are many benefits to hosting with digital Karaoke files and that will be another blog topic up later today.

Problem is this… in addition to copying of Karaoke discs, the technology has allowed easy copying of Karaoke files and those have been put up on peer sharing technologies like RealmWorld which advertised by KaraokeInfo and has allowed people to download massive collections which they have used Ebay, Craigslist and a host of other sites to sell content they downloaded illegally with no costs at all.

We run 3 bar systems and 1 private system and since 1998 we have spent over $140,000 on Karaoke music. I can not compete with someone who obtains all their music at no cost and is using untrained hosts on home quality Karaoke systems for the price of a bar tab. That is my side of the problem.

The music industry gives little or no respect to Karaoke and Karaoke technology has never been specifically addressed in any legislation. Therefore contracts and agreements have been loosely based on the US Copyright Law and many disagreements have resulted. The record companies have not gone after small disc companies who are totally infringing on copyrights and paying nothing in artists and publisher commissions… They have gone after the larger companies that are trying to do it right and make ends meet. So all of the major companies have been getting sued and buried in legal fees and settlement fees while the worst of the infringers march on.

End result of all of this… Major companies like NuTech, Music Maestro, DK, Priddis, Legends, and Pioneer are now gone… They are out of business. Top Hits Monthly went out of business with several other companies that were putting out discs, but never did it legally. Reasons vary, but end result, they are all gone! The only remaining companies that are doing it right and paying fees in accordance with the existing system are Pop Hits Monthly (Stellar), Chartbuster, Sound Choice, Disney, All-Star (makers of most of the brands you see at Wal-Marts and other chain retailers), and Sound Choice. All of these companies have watched fees go up, legal costs sky-rocket, and sales go down as more and more of their music is being shared and copied instead of purchased. All of them have extremely questionable futures and even these companies that were once extremely successful have cut back to the bone and are still watching revenues drop to nothing.

Why is all of this a problem? Do you love to sing songs, like I do? Do you enjoy having your favorite versions of songs? Do you share my desire to do things the right way and do it legally while making sure artists are compensated? If you said yes to any of these questions, you must realize if these companies go under, where are your new Karaoke songs going to come from? What quality will they be? The cost of putting out a legal Karaoke disc with 10 to 12 tracks is somewhere in the neighborhood of $8,000 to $12,000. 15 song discs can run up to about $20,000. This is including licensing fees, sync fees, administrative documentation fees, production costs, etc. It is NOT including overhead of the company, costs of the disc production and distribution. So, if they go out of business will anyone be putting out any legal music or is the entire industry doing to go underground and be the land of computer geek, hackers and file sharers using illegal content? Meanwhile, legitimate Karaoke hosting companies are going under because they can not support paying for music, properly trained hosts and professional equipment because of extremley low cost competition by the the myriad of people doing shows with no costs in exchange for beer money.

We all need to come together and work together or the Karaoke world we love is going to go away.

Folks, I apologize for the bleak first post, but I want everyone to understand the dire situation we are in… This is all written from my personal perspective and from my opinion…   Any companies mentioned are from my memory and any omissions are not intentional.

All that said; go to USKaraokeAlliance.com if you want to get involved in the effort to fix these problems before it is too late!  Look forward to hearing from all of you and chatting at Mobile Beat in Las Vegas!

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