KaraokeHangouts

Many of us singing troubadours love and hate a good contest.  In this love/hate relationship, why is there an alluring aspect to them?  Maybe deep down many of us want to compare ourselves, and by comparison we are reassuring ourselves that we have a good level of singing talent; or we are trying to find out at what level of talent that is.  Maybe some just have a compulsive competitive nature and the need to win (at anything).  While some are either doing it for the money, or both. 

However, I think that we are short changed if we narrow the judging of ourselves to just singing.  Super stars aren’t measured on mere singing talent alone.  Many karaoke contests gauge other aspects.  Usually it’s singing ability, stage presence, and crowd response.  While I’m not the best singer (i.e. missed timing, an off note…), I have been given the opportunity to score well by my stage presence, or by finding ways of getting the crowd to respond.  I’m not a fan of “hamming it up,” but I feel that if the first two are done well the crowd will respond well.

I competed at WPLJ, during their qualifying round.  I liked the aspect of scoring points in these three categories.  Plus the fact that they did not have picked judges, but the judges were the singers that judged among themselves.  Of course there could be a slight factor of unfairness.  Possibly there might be a circle of friends trying to score their other friends highly.  I find that behavior to be a shallow one.  They are not being fair to themselves, and their friends. I am a very conservative judge myself.  I critique others very carefully, and nothing gives me more joy than to score someone highly when they performed admirably.

Other karaoke contests that I have seen were either mere “popularity contests,” or highly political.  I would say that in those shows you are judged by “not how well you could sing, but how many fans you could bring.”  This contest at WPLJ’s had a more fair judging aspect. 

I like to think that the best judging can be accomplished if you could have professional singing stars and talent scouts doing the judging.  But the question will arise, “How can we afford to pay them?”  Forget about trying to buy them off.

Article from Arizona Karaoke Alliance Web site:

Sound Choice, a leading manufacturer of karaoke discs and member of KIAA (Karaoke Industry Alliance of America) has filed a federal trademark violation lawsuit against 15 karaoke venues and Karaoke Jockeys (KJ’s) in the Phoenix area.  Alleging use of illegally obtained and unauthorized copies of karaoke content on hard drives, Sound Choice is asking for a jury trial to determine damages for lost revenues, “statutory damages per trademark infringed by counterfeiting”, and all profits realized by the defendants as a result of their unfair business advantage from counterfeiting of the trademarks.  Intellectual Property lawsuits have been prominent in recent news with the RIAA winning a nearly 2 million dollar verdict for willful infringement and a Blogger being sentenced to a year’s probation after leaking a Guns N’ Roses album to the internet.

 
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Sound Choice is a leader in the karaoke community and has invested nearly 20 million dollars in their karaoke music catalog.  In the mid 90’s Sound Choice routinely put out up to 5 new Karaoke discs per month and employed 75 people.  With the actions of those pirating their music, they now employ less than 10 people and  their last disc release sold under 800 copies, yet can be found on thousands of karaoke systems across the United States.  As stated in their suit,  “Sound Choice has been forced to undertake this litigation in order to ensure that it survives and continues to produce the high-quality karaoke music its fans demand, and to level the playing field for the legitimate KJs.”

You can find the rest of the article here:

http://www.azkaraokealliance.com/Karaoke_Legal_Talk.html#Blogger%20sentenced%20for%20leaking%20Guns%20N%20Roses%20album>

 
For further information regarding the KIAA:

http://www.thekiaa.org/

Your intrepid reporter attempted to qualify at one of the the semi finals for the “Karaoke Entertainer of the Year Contest“, put on by Star Media last night. The venue was WPLJ’s in Walnut Creek, on Wednesday night, September 30th. The KJ duties were admirably performed by Nan of “Bring Your Own Voice Karaoke“. This particular semifinal was for the R&B/Soul category. This category includes jazz, rap, hip hop, etc.

Considering there were 16 venues and three singers qualified from each venue to advance to the semifinals, there could potentially have been as many as 54 singers at WPLJ’s last night! In fact, only 14 contestants showed up, of which only 13 stayed around long enough to perform. Out of those 13, eight were selected to advance to the finals with two alternates, meaning 10 out of the 13 advanced to the finals in one way or another. Doing a little math, and noting that my name was not announced among the list of those advancing, it seems I was in the bottom three. Read more »

Week 3 had quite a turnout of entries. 14 SINGERS competed to move on to the semi-finals. the crowd was huge, featuring lots of new faces.The catagory was my personal favorite,,,,, Oldies. lots of great tunes were belted out. Our 3 from Dallimonti’s to move on were KIMMIE, STEVE AND EDIE. (( No, not the real Steve & Edie )) This week really turned out like I had pictured this contest going.
Nearly a full card of singers ( 16 is the maximum that can compete in 1 night )
A full house….. and tons of fun and drink. Stay tuned, I think it’s just going to get better.

From Dallimonti’s….. our 3 to advance to the semi’s will be   JIM, EDIE, & ANGELIQUE

the R&B semi finals will be held at WPLJ’s on Sept 30th.  I can’t wait to get out to some of these semi-finals to see the talent that is moving forward in the competition. The contest ran much smoother in week 2 , and we’re finding the contestants themselves are very qualified judges.,,,, I wish all of our 6 and the upcoming winners much luck as they advance.   come out and support your friends and fellow karaoke’ers at one of the venues, and especially Dallimonti’s at the end of each qualifying week ( Friday nights )