Karaoke is a small part of the music production business but it is growing in popularity. From 2000 to 2005 the market for Karaoke CDG products grew from around $1 billion to more than $20 billion. Virtually every type of music with vocals can be found on karaoke CDG.
Almost everyone has seen and heard the discs used in karaoke bars. Lyrics appear across a giant television, music blasts from the speakers, and wannabe singers live out their moment of fame from behind a mike. Some good, some not so great.
You can use studio equipment and editing tools to process and mix your tracks or you can use CDG software, which stands for compact disc plus graphics, to record your karaoke discs. It's a much more affordable method of recording.
Karaoke enthusiasts who love to throw home karaoke parties will benefit a great deal from the CDG software. You can put thousands of songs to CD. In fact you and your friends will be able to sing your hearts out for the next hundred years without running out of tunes. And you can get software for under $100.
You can also buy pre-recorded CD through dealers online. Just search "karaoke records" online. There are adult CD's and children's CDs so the next time you need to put a child's birthday party together consider a Karaoke party.
Besides the many websites that offer pre-recorded CDs many major retailers are jumping on the band wagon - Kmart, Target, Walmart, and Radio Shack to name just a few, are all offering cheap karaoke players and pre-records. The Singing Machine is the largest US maker of both discs and equipment.
You can also find many websites that offer downloadable karaoke music and with the right software and equipment you can quickly burn these tunes to disk. If your software has the capability of acting as a karaoke machine then you're ready to start singing.
The technical standards that make karaoke a possibility are actually because of the Red Book specs for burning audio CDs. The Red Book which governs the burning of regular file formats like WAV, MP3, and JPEG, has been extended to cover CD+G formats.
Karaoke arrangements cannot violate copyright law. A song can be published without the artist's approval as long as you obtain a compulsory license form the Harry Fox Agency and pay the royalties set out.
Much of the legitimate karaoke produced is a rewrite of the original arrangement which sounds like the original but in fact has enough changes as to not become a copyright issue and thus no copyright infringement occurs. If you are downloading karaoke music make sure you are within the law.
It wasn't long ago that the software needed to create CDG karaoke discs cost more than $16,000. But currently there are two excellent full software packages that are available for under $200. It's amazing what can happen in 5 years.
DART or Dartech and MTU or Micro Technologies are the two big players in the karaoke CDG software game. Both have software that allows for assembling of the music, graphics, and lyrics into a composite file. You can download and purchase DART Karaoke Studio CD+G online.
Karaoke is a great way to have some fun at your next get together. And since it's become so affordable and so accessible anyone can give it a try. The question is are you up for some serious music fun?
