$100 for a 1.5 hour karaoke gig for a Church Group on a Tuesday night?

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rickryan.com said:
I'm quite curious. Does your brother catch crap from other ministers/Christians over DJing at alcoholic events? I'm thinking he might be able to get away with it in your area but here in the Bible belt, there'd be lots of better-than-thous howling to no end.
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No. He is non denominational. Honestly, I don't know too much about his church dealings. He became a Minister only 2 years ago. He posts ads on craigslist asking if anyone would like him to pray for them. He gets A LOT of responses, and has met and or talked to a lot of people going through very tough times in their life.

He also attends a meeting with some other ministers once every couple of months...like a prayer meeting.
 
Do you have actual "karaoke" music? That's where a lot of the setup costs are. I had to buy the Chartbuster collections and Sound Choice ones along with many other fillers .. probably $1500 to statup. My clientele has been mostly older songs, but if you need current, then you need to subscribe (or buy singles) .. probably running another $100/month (much more than music).

Typically I have 2 monitors .. one for the singer and one for the audience. If the venue has both, you're probably OK, but karaoke takes twice as long to setup as a similar small dance system. Also, check with the restaurant to see what video feed they need .. some are still old school composite (single yellow RCA) and most laptops don't output it (most karaoke disc players still do). I use VGA, but many venues are RGB or HDMI .. need to make sure you can hook up or you're bringing more gear.
 
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Also forgot to mention, you need a published karaoke song list or some mechanism to have them search. If you do it simply by them asking, you're going to be spending a lot of time looking things up to see what you have.

It's all pretty easy once you get rolling (except for the longer setup/takedown) .. just takes a bi of startup time/cost.
 
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DJ Ricky B said:
Decisions...The pastor sent me a email last night asking me to confirm today as he has to leave on a trip tomorrow. He mentioned he does have others willing to do the event, but would prefer me. (Maybe something about the other guys willing to do it throws him off a bit)
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There it is Jeff.
 
Thanks Tig...I didn't see it before my first post I don't think he had posted it at that point I had left the screen for a few mins. I did see it before my second post
 
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steve149 said:
Also forgot to mention, you need a published karaoke song list or some mechanism to have them search. If you do it simply by them asking, you're going to be spending a lot of time looking things up to see what you have.

It's all pretty easy once you get rolling (except for the longer setup/takedown) .. just takes a bi of startup time/cost.
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I still have my old karaoke system in storage. I have a Gemini Dual CDG-3700. I also have a CDG Library that includes about 350 CDs. About 6,000 songs. I also have 8 catalog books in binders to use. They still look good.

I have 3 Yellow Composite cables I can use if I go this route.

The easier/less equipment option would be to utilize my laptop and use a 12 ft HDMI cable to plug into their flat screen TV. I can stream karaoke music from Virtual DJ. ...However, I do not have a catalog for this. I can pull up their online catalog, and have people scroll through my laptop...Maybe I can download it in PDF format, set up my back up laptop, and have the catalog showing on the back up laptop, and people can use my back up laptop to search through the catalog.
 
DJ Ricky B said:
I still have my old karaoke system in storage. I have a Gemini Dual CDG-3700. I also have a CDG Library that includes about 350 CDs. About 6,000 songs. I also have 8 catalog books in binders to use. They still look good.

I have 3 Yellow Composite cables I can use if I go this route.

The easier/less equipment option would be to utilize my laptop and use a 12 ft HDMI cable to plug into their flat screen TV. I can stream karaoke music from Virtual DJ. ...However, I do not have a catalog for this. I can pull up their online catalog, and have people scroll through my laptop...Maybe I can download it in PDF format, set up my back up laptop, and have the catalog showing on the back up laptop, and people can use my back up laptop to search through the catalog.
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One challenge would be if you use the CDG player AND the venue can't distribute Composite .. may need to verify with them what actually they can use.
Do you have Karaoke software and have you ripped the karaoke discs? If one thinks ripping a disc to mp3 is time-consuming .. wait until you try CDGs .. takes frickin forever to rip AND fix/complete the basic tages (songname, artist, etc.). I would guess that only 40% of the discs I ripped (hundreds of them) went through clean.
 
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ittigger said:
When I rip, I do not use CDDB. I hand key everything.
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Most of the rippers use freedb, which is even less policed .. so checking is a given .. correcting a likelihood.
 
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ittigger said:
I'd rather not deal with it - I at least then know if it's screwed up, its my problem. I also provide consistency.
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If I did it often, it would be worth it, but 90% of the songs will NEVER be asked for around here. I try to get the titles and such close .. I then use KJ File Manager to batch correct Artists and such .. much easier than doing them individually during the rip.
 
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steve149 said:
If I did it often, it would be worth it, but 90% of the songs will NEVER be asked for around here. I try to get the titles and such close .. I then use KJ File Manager to batch correct Artists and such .. much easier than doing them individually during the rip.
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Understood. For me, it was about getting it done as I was going through .. instead of coming back after the fact and reviewing everything all over again. I hand keyed .. and to make it 'easier', I used copy / paste wherever possible.

I learned early on that the online DB's had the artist(s) names wrong, the titles wrong, missing or incorrect punctuation, etc and it became longer to rip, review and correct than to just enter it correct and rip. Often, the DB's even had whatever media I had as something other album, track or other.
 
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To be honest. I believe the hack KJs out there who illegally downloaded karaoke music, and went out and did karaoke gigs at bars all over the place between say 2005 and 2012 simply killed the industry. The price points for what clients who wanted karaoke at their events just went down the tubes. The Agency would book me on some VERY NICE paying karaoke gigs over the years back in the day. I mean karaoke was where the money was at for a while.

I remember one time the agency added on karaoke for $350 on top of my regular DJ quote, and the customer paid the $350. This was back in 2005. I did a 4 hour corporate event for $950. EASY MONEY. The price without karaoke would have been $600 at the time. The good paying karaoke gigs faded away once the karaoke software became popular on laptops, and everybody was using a karaoke library they got completely for free, or paid very little for. Bar owners were having no problem finding KJs with "50,000 songs" "80,000 songs" to do a Friday or Saturday night 4 hour gig for $150. Then after a few years of the hacks, and low ball DJs infiltrating the bar market, the overall genre of karaoke sort of just lost it's luster and popularity.

Today...It's almost like a novelty once in a blue moon thing for people to do. It can be very fun, but most people have no interest in paying much for it.
 
Which brings me to another point? Why bother spending a massive amount of time burning karaoke CDG CDs and tagging song titles, and compiling a library in 2015 when you can just pay a small subscription fee, have access to thousands of songs, and stream the music (as long as there is an internet connection).

With today's technology, and what happened with hack DJs, and illegal free downloaded karaoke music over the years, the Karaoke Genre has just been doomed. Not enough money in it to really bother pushing it any more. It really has turned into something for the rare karaoke hobbyist to partake in, and maintain. And I believe those karaoke hobbyist DJs are getting rare as time marches on. I don't see any young KJs out there. Most guys are older bar jocks that got into it prior to 2008 and have stuck around doing the Karaoke bar gigs here and there reaping the benefits from their illegally downloaded karaoke library.
 
Proformance said:
This gig would be a minimum of 3 or 4 hours of labor regardless, so I am not inclined to accept it on those terms. This sounds more like an ideal rental customer.
I would rent him a karaoke system and let them run it themselves. My Rentals are typically $229 + $109 for delivery. I just did one hour of karaoke (as KJ) on Saturday for $500. I always charge more to be present as the KJ. With a rental people can have as much time as they want for the party without increasing their cost.
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Great rental idea, but if it's only an hour and a half,
it wouldn't be worth driving home and back...even if it is close.
Either way it would be, as you noted, a 3 or 4 hour commitment.
A group of less than 50 people doesn't warrant them spending more than $100...
so I can't see trying to bargain with a church to up the rate.
They'll just keep calling KJ's until they find one who takes he offer.
 
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I might try it once and see how it goes. I like Karaoke, but I don't like patching into house systems but I do what I have to sometimes... But $100 would be just a line for me, if he is having it at a restaurant I would watch and see if people are eating and drinking and spending cash.

For $100 I might put out a tip jar and see how that goes, but above all, it would have to be fun. For that pay if the gig isn't fun, it ain't worth doing.
 
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Karaoke for me only pays $150-$200 (plus I get food/drinks) .. I do it for fun and because it's a local bar and I know most of the folks there. I would never do it if I was treating what I do as a business .. way too much work keeping up as well as longer setups/breakdowns.
 
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Ausumm said:
Great rental idea, but if it's only an hour and a half,
it wouldn't be worth driving home and back...even if it is close.
Either way it would be, as you noted, a 3 or 4 hour commitment.
A group of less than 50 people doesn't warrant them spending more than $100...
so I can't see trying to bargain with a church to up the rate.
They'll just keep calling KJ's until they find one who takes he offer.
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Delivery is only an option. A lot of people pick it up and return it the next day - which is only about 20 minutes of my time.
 
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DJ Ricky B said:
Which brings me to another point? Why bother spending a massive amount of time burning karaoke CDG CDs and tagging song titles, and compiling a library in 2015 when you can just pay a small subscription fee, have access to thousands of songs, and stream the music (as long as there is an internet connection).

With today's technology, and what happened with hack DJs, and illegal free downloaded karaoke music over the years, the Karaoke Genre has just been doomed. Not enough money in it to really bother pushing it any more. It really has turned into something for the rare karaoke hobbyist to partake in, and maintain. And I believe those karaoke hobbyist DJs are getting rare as time marches on. I don't see any young KJs out there. Most guys are older bar jocks that got into it prior to 2008 and have stuck around doing the Karaoke bar gigs here and there reaping the benefits from their illegally downloaded karaoke library.
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It's true that free karaoke streaming and pay as you go karaoke sites have reduced my rental market substantially - but, that is true across the board. DJs are equally in decline at all family events save the bigger ones like weddings an bar mitzvahs.
 
Proformance said:
Delivery is only an option. A lot of people pick it up and return it the next day - which is only about 20 minutes of my time.
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Definitely makes the offer better...
but it's even more reason for them to NOT pay more than $100.
 
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