Karaoke service 'Net' blossomed

Technology can change, but people's preferences are immutable. Everyone loves compelling music contests, and that's why more and more "Golden Karaoke Singles" selections translate from TV screens to computer screens.

The Internet is like a big stage: Anyone who dreams of being a star can post their demonstration videos to sites like YouTube or GarageBand.com, hoping to catch someone's eye.

In some cases, the results are heartfelt. These "homegrown" video clips are popular, their owners become famous (albeit at a range) and money (a little bit) starts pouring into their pockets.

But the intentions of KSolo, Bix and SingShot are different. With their newly launched virtual Karaoke club, they want to create a new playground where performances are judged, graded and ranked - just like a singer contest.

Two Chinese students in a "homegrown" clip, lip-synching the song of the BackStreet Boys group.Their clip caught the eye of a media company in Beijing, which was looking for a lipid student for Pepsi's commercial.Source: Forbes

All three sites require you to use a computer mic to sing and listeners will act as judges, comments and grading. At KSolo and SingShot, only "singers" can participate, while with Bix Singer, including dancers, comedians, lipos . are encouraged to perform via Webcam.

Copyright burden

However, these sites are facing a big challenge, which is different from YouTube, users cannot upload copyrighted music or videos.

KSolo, SingShot and Bix Singer took months to argue with record labels like EMI, Warner Music or Sony BMG around the lyrics lyrics; and with Karaoke libraries like Songdog and Soundchoice about the right to use non-verbal music.

If no agreement is reached, each website may have to pay up to $ 150,000 for each song.

Currently, Bix has 1000 songs, KSolo has 4000 and SingShot offers 2,500 songs. These are the numbers equivalent to a standard karaoke bar, but all three sites promise the song catalog will not stop there.

At this point, you can only find classic Beatles songs, but recent "hits" like Since U been gone by Kelly Clarkson are distinct.

Bix's list of songs is too poor, even the once-right Righteous Brothers songs like Unchained Melody don't exist. Meanwhile, Apple Computer's digital music service sold 2 million songs for only 99 cents per copy.

Source: Karaoke-philipsburg Sites like YouTube and Google search for videos are lucky to escape the copyright burden. If their users post copyrighted content, these sites will claim that they are protected by the Millennium Digital Copyright Law - accordingly, as long as they do not encourage or profit from the violation, and accepting to remove the offending video clips, they will not break the law.

A promising business direction

From the actual situation, there is always a possibility that YouTube will join the virtual Karaoke market. Currently, YouTube posts 100 million videos every day. " If these karaoke and lip-syncing videos have lyrics, YouTube is not foolish ," said analyst Phil Leigh.

Bix, SingShot and KSolo are working hard to find revenue sources to pay for their royalties. Bix - new service is in beta stage - completely free for both viewers and post users. They hope to earn quite a bit of money from advertising and sponsorship.

Creative Strategy expert Ben Bajarin said Bix's business model is very promising. " Imagine, if Coca-Cola organized a competition asking users to post the most funny videos they could think of Coke bottles on Bix. Bix allows them to control the content that people use post up so sponsors have nothing to fear ".

However, Bajarin was not so optimistic about the model of KSolo and SingShot. Both sites charge users $ 9.95 a month and only allow "music" clips to be included.

" Although karaoke has the potential to be a big trend like podcasts and blogs, new advertising is the way to maintain it for a long time ," Bajarin said.

Thien Y