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

Karaoke isn't popular any more. I have seen maybe 2 karaoke inquiries come through Gig Masters this year.

Corporate parties aren't requesting karaoke any more. Less and less bars tend to do karaoke nights. Speaking of that. I went to Ocean City this weekend, and the hotel restaurant and bar had a lady karaoke duo that played there Friday night 5:30 - 9. I missed the show as I walked into the bar area at 10, and they had already packed up and left. But I was talking with the bartender and asked just our of curiousity if she knew how much they paid for the karaoke DJ. She said they are hobbyists (two ladies) who do the show there every Friday night for $125. I guess the two split the $125 between them.

My Dad has seen their show, and said they are good. My Dad does karaoke at the American Legion and Elks Lodge, and gets paid $200 a night for 4 hours at those places. ...He is fine with it since they are easy gigs, and it keeps him busy.


As for renting karaoke systems...I know a DJ who rents out a cavs unit filled with over 30,000 "legal" songs for $100 a night. However, the people renting it has to have their own sound system and monitor to plug it into. ...I say "legal" because even though he claims it's legal, I believe it isn't. He will sell a loaded cavs unit with 15,000 pre loaded songs for $1799. I don't do enough karaoke to bother with that sort of expense. Also, now that music can be streamed for cheap...There are much more effective ways to provide karaoke with a laptop, and internet connection.

True, any one can sit in front of their computer, or tablet, or phone and sing karaoke. Of course that is not exactly the same as participating in a karaoke night at a bar or event. However, in any case Karaoke demand is way down compared to the past. The only places where karaoke is still going on a regular basis are old bars, or American Legions, and Elks Lodges.

In 2003, more than 30% of our income was from karaoke gigs. Today it's like 1%.

Proformance said:

The slip in karaoke is not because there's no demand, it's because there are now FREE streaming solutions that can fill a good chunk of that demand.

YouTube alone is the world's largest streaming music source with more than 100 million songs - three times the catalog of iTunes or Spotify.

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You just made me think...What's to stop any one from offering unlimited karaoke via youtube at private parties and events? Is it legal? If it isn't, does it even matter? I mean the only thing stopping DJs from doing this is really having a good internet connection. If there is no internet or a very slow connection, then it wouldn't work, but if there's a good connection, the DJ can offer it, and literally have no karaoke music expense.

Technically, as long as there's an internet connection, any DJ can offer a million+ karaoke music library at every event! Just log into youtube, search, load a song, and maximize the screen, and hit play. Pretty darn simple. No need for a Karaoke KJ program really. ...I mean how often do people ask for down or up 2 or 3 keys for their song? You could probably add reverb, echo, delay and change the key through a good mixer if you wanted that ability. However, that stuff was rarely ever asked for, so you really wouldn't need it.

A national trivia company has an account with Applebees. About half the applebees locations out there will do the trivia. They pay the company $150. $100 to the DJ they bring in, and $50 to the company.

I was contacted by the guy with the trivia company that puts it together, and he wanted me to do it for them, but I happened to be working the Tuesday night they wanted me to start. Also, the applebees location was 34 miles away. ...A bit of a drive for $100.

There are two bars I know of that did trivia in my area. $100 is what they offer. One of the bars I believe stopped doing it in August. The other bar still advertises it. I think just some regulars go in and do it.

There is a BBQ restaurant down the street that does Karaoke Friday nights 9:30 to 1am. I don't know how much they pay the guy to do it, but I have driven by there a few times and it looks like maybe 20 - 30 cars in their lot every Friday night during karaoke....which is about full for that lot since it's small.

Proformance said:

You're just figuring this out now?
There has never been anything illegal about how people get music into a PRIVATE event.
The DJ is not a commercial user unless and until he applies the performance to promote another commercial purpose - such as a bar, restaurant or other retail/public trade space.

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That's my point...even at a bar. Who's going to police the DJ who uses Youtube at a bar? Is youtube going to find out, and ban the person from using Youtube?

Is the karaoke police going to show up, and slap a fine on him?

Besides KJs have been using illegally downloaded mp3g files for years. What would it matter if they were stored on the computer, or just streamed off of youtube at a bar gig?

Update:

Did the church group karaoke gig last night.

First things first: Can't use the "house system" The house system is a boom box book shelf system on the opposite side of the bar, and connected to like 4 small surround sound home theatre type speakers with 3 speakers in the bar, and one located outside the bar. So I set up a single 10" powered speaker on a stand.

Apparently this is a new small northern Baptist church group that is trying to get started up. The Pastor just started it over a month ago. So the objective of doing this karaoke night is really to attract more people to check out their group. He promoted that they do prayer meetings in the room upstairs at this bar every Tuesday night, and said all are welcome to join. The 4th Tuesday of the month will be the night they do this karaoke for 1.5 hours.

Anyway, I figured I would use my online karaoke subscription through Virtual DJ on this gig. It was easy to set up, and I had a great internet connection through my mobile hotspot on my phone. I started the night and the pastor had this idea of it being 70s, 80s, and 90s music "The Battle of the decades" ...So I started out explaining how it's a battle of the decades night, and at the end of the night we will figure out which decade people liked the most by crowd reaction according to how they liked the songs the people picked. After each person or group sang, I would mention which decade the song was from. We had a good mix, but we definitely had most people sing 70s hits.

About the music selection...I had the VDJ karaoke catalog set up in PDF format on my 2nd laptop and told people to scroll through it to pick their songs. I did not print off this catalog ...That was a mistake. After the pastor sang the first song, it was difficult to get people to pick a song from the online catalog. People were taking forever scrolling through the catalog, and it turns out the VDJ karaoke does not offer a lot of KEY SONGS in karaoke format. After about 15 minutes of no one singing, and a couple people complaining they can't find anything they like on the catalog I decided to go get my karaoke cds, catalogs, and old tube screen TV out of my SUV. I had to walk across the street and carry everything in. Took me another 12 minutes or so to set up and while setting up, people started picking songs from my old karaoke library.

I had about 8 singers right away. The rest of the night I only played 1 song from VDJ karaoke, and everything else was from CD. The Pastor asked me to stay until 9:30 since there were no singers early on and I had to set up more equipment (He basically hinted that that was my fault)...I said yeah sure I'll stay.

One thing that did happen is that 2 guys who were not apart of the group and happened to be in the bar picked "Baby Got Back - Sir Mix A lot" to sing. They sang it, and people had fun, but two very Christian ladies with the group apparently were "offended" by the song. The Pastor asked me to let my brother know to not play certain songs that people request that are raunchy or very borderline with the lyrics, and aim for the cleaner songs next time to do this karaoke night.

So really they got a 2 hour time frame out of me instead of 1.5 hours. ...I ended at 9:28 to be exact. I asked the crowd which decade was the best, 70s, 80s, or 90s...and 80s was the clear winner.

After the gig was over, the Pastor showed me the room upstairs and talked, and talked, and talked to me. So I ended up sticking around listening to him for another 35 minutes. Finally got out of there and loaded out at 10:40. The pastor was nice enough to offer a hand, and helped me carry a few things to my car.

Overall, I learned that the Virtual DJ karaoke library might have over 15,000 songs you can stream, but 95% of it is stuff that people don't want to sing anyway. A lot of it is newer artists, and much of the songs are not HIT songs that they had. People want to sing oldies, and retro songs, and big tv movie songs like Greased Lightning.


I am not doing this gig moving forward. My brother is doing it in the coming months. I'll have to let him know what to expect. He is a Minister, I am sure he will appreciate hanging out with this pastor after the gig talking for long lengths of time. I was nice and conversed with him for a while, and listen to his ideas about growing their church, but I was really ready to load out and leave.