We're now taking karaoke bookings and have a few in the pipeline already for this year and 2023. We've got all the gear now, a decent (Yamaha) mixer, several radio mics, two TV screens, etc. The last thing we need to do is compile a list of karaoke song books.
I wasn't going to bother doing this, but I'm sure that such books are essential (or at least they used to be) at karaoke gigs. When I last did karaoke, I took out a large binder with songs listed alphabetically, firstly by artist's name and again by song title. It was like an encyclopaedia! It was HUGE! I only had one and that would be passed around the various tables.
Chatting to a friend recently who does the occasional karaoke gig, he told me that there is no need to have a huge binder which lists thousands of songs. He simply takes out a small binder with half a dozen pages which lists the most popular songs, i.e. those which are more likely to be requested at a typical karaoke gig. He also has a small disclaimer which states that he has many, many other songs and just to "ask if it's not listed".
Seems reasonable to me. Enter my girlfriend, who assures me that you cannot do it this way and that I MUST have all the songs listed twice, alphabetically, as mentioned above.
My personal preference would be to list the most popular songs from each genre. Perhaps 100 or so for these and also for each decade. Maybe then list a few others in the traditional alphabetical order. I am now wondering how big a job this is going to be.
The questions I have are:
1. Is there a traditional MUST DO format for karaoke song collections?
2. Does such a list have to be huge? i.e. include thousands of songs?
3. Do karaoke DJs even bother with such folders these days?
A simple enough issue I suppose, but we just want to get this right.
Thanks.
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