Thinking big about karaoke. Democratizing tools, breaking rules.
I just found what looks like a karaoke mp3 blog: freekaraokemusic.blogspot.com. Right now they’ve only posted torrents, but it seems promising.
Since it’s really the only good karaoke source I’ve been able to find so far, I just added it as a sidebar widget (to your right).
How do Karaoke DJ’s share songs? When I started this, I was baffled.
The karaoke scene is small enough that it almost seems like internet hasn’t hit it yet. You can’t find karaoke tracks on Gnutella (using Acquisition) or Soulseek. There aren’t any mp3 blogs for karaoke (yet–more on that later). You can find karaoke torrents on the Pirate Bay but it’s not at all comprehensive.
But the case for filesharing is so compelling it must be happening somewhere.
I was working off this even more baffling comment from a determined but non-tech-savvy friend of mine along the lines of “oh yeah, I paid $40 for this program that said I could download any karaoke song, and it was really hard to set up, but when I got it working it worked great.”
It sounded like one of those scams where they sell Limewire for $40, but I had no notion what it was they were bottling and selling.
Anyway, some Googling later and I found kmp3s.com, a site made by the karaoke community on the #karaoke+mp3s IRC channel. Turns out people are using a bunch of scripts for the old-standby Windows IRC client into a napstery arrangement where everybody can search everybody else’s library. Bootleg as all hell, but it works and it’s totally free (though if that company can get my friend Nancy up and running with this rickety setup they deserve every penny).
Folks in the IRC channel (#karaoke+mp3s on Undernet) even went to the trouble of putting together good tutorials. So one day I fired up my Windows laptop, left my low tolerance for figuring out bullshit at the threshold, and pushed through to the other side. Here goes:
Unless you know somebody who has one, getting a big karaoke library will take time. But in a pinch, you could run a perfectly good karaoke night with no library, downloading songs on the fly.
The easiest way would be using a Mac with kJams and its built in store (powered by Tricerasoft). Songs are $1-$2. Just hit up each singer per song (in some places, like Brazil, most karaoke is pay-for-play).
On Windows, the options aren’t as rosy. You could use the Tricarasoft player and its built-in store. Or you could use the Tricerasoft or Buykaraokedownloads web stores with Winamp or PyKaraoke.
There’s a free option too: download using mIRC. Set up is tricky, but I made a step by step guide: Free karaoke music (using mIRC). Downloads won’t be as fast, but they’ll be fast enough. The selection will be just as good if not better–there are a few people with huge libraries sharing consistently.
The only hitch is that the wifi router at the venue will need to have UPnP turned on, or you’ll need to use your own 3g card. Make sure to test first.
Free Karaoke Music