Karaoke players (like Winamp or VLC) can’t read inside .zip files, so you need to unzip all your karaoke to use them. Turns out, if you have a big library there are just too many files to use the unix wildcard *.

And you get an error like: -bash: /bin/ls: Argument list too long

Here’s how to move your huge library of karaoke songs to one folder, and unzip them. It’s well worth the trouble to be able to use Winamp (which is super-simple and solid for karaoke nights).

Open up Terminal. Type “cd Music/Karaoke/CDG” or whatever to get into your karaoke folder.

To copy to one folder:

mkdir ../onefolder/

find . -exec cp “{}” ../onefolder \; -print

To unzip all:

cd ../onefolder/

find . -exec unzip -o “{}” \; -print

To delete all (careful with this! If you’re not careful you could delete your entire hard drive!)

find ../onefolder/ -name “*.zip” -exec rm “{}” \; -print

If you don’t understand how terminal commands work, just use Finder and Spotlight to do the last step.

If you’re starting from scratch, PyKaraoke will be the simplest: just add your music, and go to File -> Print Song List.

If you’re using Winamp, just import your music (unzip all .zip files first), sort by Artist or Title, drag into a playlist, select all, and hit Ctrl-Alt-G. This will open up a browser window with your playlist rendered as HTML. Print it.

If that was hard to follow, keep reading for step by step instructions…

If you’re using a Mac, see this post: The easiest way to make a karaoke song book on a Mac

Printing a songlist in Pykaraoke…

1. Download PyKaraoke for Windows, install, and run.
2. Go to File -> Add New Songs to Database
3. Click on “Add Folder” (top right) and choose a folder.
4. Click on “Save and Close” (at the bottom)
5. Go to File – > Print Song List

Printing a songlist in Winamp…

1. Follow these instructions to install Winamp and import your songs (if you haven’t yet)
2. In your media library, sort by Artist or Title.
3. Select all (Ctrl-A) and drag to your playlist
4. Click a song in the playlist, and select all (Ctrl-A)
5. Hit Ctrl-Alt-G.
6. A browser window will open with your playlist rendered as HTML.
7. Print it, or copy the contents into a word processor and add columns, etc.

If you use both Mac and Windows, t’s a tough call between kJams and Winamp. If you’re going to be actively updating your library and your song books, kJams is it.

If you want to set things up once, never think about it again, and spend your karaoke night hitting on people, use Winamp.

Now, without further ado, the verdicts:

The best karaoke software for Mac OS X: kJams

The best karaoke software for Windows: Winamp

The best karaoke software for Linux: PyKaraoke

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!