Best karaoke software for Windows

Winamp isn’t even karaoke software. That’s probably what makes it so awesome.

Battle tested in the dormitories of our youth, on the Pentiums of yesteryear, Winamp + CDG plugin is lightning fast and un-fuckwithable. Also, everybody knows how it works, making it easy to enlist helpers (or let singers browse on their own). Here’s how to get it running…

Setting up Winamp:

1. Download Winamp  
2. Do a full install, but uncheck everything on the “Get the Most out of Winamp” screen. Choose “Winamp Classic” skin.
3. Close the EQ, click the menu button in the top left corner and click “Media Library”
4. Close the various media library panes until you just have a search field and a list, and attach it to the side of the player (see below)
5. Unzip your music to .cdg & .mp3 (winamp)
6. Drag your karaoke music folder into your library.

Install the CDG plugin:

1. Quit Winamp
2. Download the CDG plugin
3. Run the installer

When you restart Winamp and play a karaoke track, a window should show up, like this:

If you right-click on the video window, you can make it bigger, or make it full screen.

Now, go to Menu -> Options -> Media Library and change the dropdown from “Plays Selected Item(s)” to “Enqueues Selected Item(s)”. Now you can add songs to the playlist by double-clicking or hitting enter, and it’s harder to interrupt the song that’s playing.

Bonus Trippiness: Go to Menu -> Options -> Plugins -> Visualization and under “Fullscreen Settings” choose your second monitor as the display adapter and in the bottom left check “Desktop Mode”. Then if you set the lyrics window to partially occupy the screen, Winamp trippiness will display around the borders. Eat it, Karafun!