7 year graph of karaoke trends

This data was gleaned from the NAMM global music reports. I could only go back as far as 2000.

http://shup.com/Shup/21687/1081522576-karaoke-trends-OpenOffice.org-Calc.png

My next, harder step is going to be figuring out the number of karaoke venues (around my area) that have sprung up since 2000. I plan on going through old issues of the metro magazine (a local music scene mag)

Would be interesting to see a graph of the number of hosts from the same time periods...and then another graph with the number of shows available to the public... I would bet those graphs would counter this one...especially if you did a graph of external hard drive sales!

I am sure there are as many hosts as there were at the peak time, maybe more...gee, why would they be selling less discs? Hmmmmmmmm.....

BTW Toqer, I dont know if you can accurately get that info from archived mags, as it has been my experience that most of the shows in my area do not promote at all. On any given night, there are several shows available here, but only a couple to a few promote in the free listings.

You can compare by sales in millions but you must also take into consideration.

1 - The Number of Disc being produced has decreased over the last 5 Years.

2 - The #1 Karaoke Manufacture SoundChoice changed their pricing on packages as well as disc. I remember paying $32 for a soundchoice disc.

You will find sales are even lower for 2007 as Sound Choice only released 11 disc.

When did the liscensing issues for karaoke change again.. It would be interesting to track the trends relative to that.

If there was some way to graphically prove how companies would benefit from granting digital liscensing. *thinking*

anyway thanks for the graph Toqer..

-James

You can compare by sales in millions but you must also take into consideration.

Not true. I have direct contact with karaoke companies and they blame piracy. I agree with them 100%.

Microsoft has been researching this thing called Netscan. It scans Binary newsgroups and generates statistics on them.

http://netscan.research.microsoft.com/

I'm going to compare the newsgroup alt.binaries.sounds.karaoke to karaoke sales. I believe this newsgroup is the most damaging contributor to the downfall of karaoke. If your ISP hosts its own NNTP server and has deep article retention, a person could steal a 100,000 song collection in less than a week on a 1.5mbps connection.

What we'll do is compare the max activity of the group to karaoke sales.

Graph from 2000.
http://shup.com/Shup/21812/10817087-Netscan-Newsgroup-Report-Windows-Internet-Explorer.png
The max activity for the group in 2000 was 1 single week with 1734 messages. American Idol still hadn't come yet, so karaoke was still considered "lame" by most americans (sorry to say it, but its true)

Graph from 2001. AI mania begins:
http://shup.com/Shup/21813/108170169-Netscan-Newsgroup-Report-Windows-Internet-Explorer.png
Max messages this year was 2933. The group is still sluggish until AI, then the popularity of karaoke, and of karaoke piracy begins to surge. There was a few weeks of 2000 messages, but people still don't really know about PC karaoke either. The PhySystem Mp3+g plugin for winamp is nonexistant at this point, the only companies with software offerings at this point are MTU and maybe tricerasoft.

2002, double up time:
http://shup.com/Shup/21814/1081702044-Netscan-Newsgroup-Report-Windows-Internet-Explorer.png
Max messages in 2002, 4357. The record from the year before becomes the daily average.

2003, another double up year:
http://shup.com/Shup/21815/1081702515-Netscan-Newsgroup-Report-Windows-Internet-Explorer.png
The max this year was 9011. Again, the max for the previous year becomes the daily average. People start getting wise to PC based karaoke and 2003 we begin to see the decline in karaoke sales.

2004, are we done yet?
http://shup.com/Shup/21816/1081702836-Netscan-Newsgroup-Report-Windows-Internet-Explorer.png
Max this year is a little over 10,000. There's a few peaks in the beginning of the year that show heavy traffic, but most weeks are 3000 or so posts a week.

2005, Geometric growth in karaoke piracy.
http://shup.com/Shup/21817/1081703213-Netscan-Newsgroup-Report-Windows-Internet-Explorer.png
With an astonishing 37,007 messages in one week, 2005 proves that the popularity of karaoke piracy has quadrupaled. The previous years record is broken *five* times. Karaoke sales plummet now.

2006
http://shup.com/Shup/21818/1081703614-Netscan-Newsgroup-Report-Windows-Internet-Explorer.png
While the previous years record wasn't broken, there are more 10,000+ post weeks than any other year. The overall volume of posts is still 5% greater than it was in 2005.

2007, who knows?
http://shup.com/Shup/21819/108170390-Netscan-Newsgroup-Report-Windows-Internet-Explorer.png

Microsoft decided to end this tool in 2007 so I have incomplete data. The record number of posts for 2007 was a little over 5000.

I don't think the decline of karaoke sales and the increase of karaoke piracy is just a co-incidence, then again I don't bury my head in the sand either.

Finally, if anyone wants to help me on this (I was too lazy to do it) could you tally each year for me? Start at 2000, hover over each week, jot down the number of posts, then add up all the posts for the year.

OK I was bored, so I consolidated the data and compiled a line graph.
http://shup.com/Shup/21822/1081715757-karaoke-trends-OpenOffice.org-Calc.png

I took the sales numbers (like 191.1 mill) and multiplied each of them by 1000 so the line graph would start out somewhat even.

I also want to thank odjt for allowing me to run my mouth with hard facts, not a lot of sites like me, we all know this :)

The cold hard facts show that when the number of posts in the newsgroup increased, karaoke sales decreased.

<3 toq

One last seperate note of a post.

I'm sick of arguing with folks about this. I'm sick of people burying thier heads in the sand to the problems facing the modern KJ. If you want to help me compile data, fine, if you want to tell me "Nice work" great, but other than that, lets keep this thread to facts and not theories we pull out our butts ok?

Looks like someone caught "Graphitis" from Dude Walker.......LOL

Thanks for the charts!

My Points are facts.

You can not directly compare 2 points you must take all factors into consideration.

Sure, Piracy has hurt Karaoke but look what it's done to the music industry.

No matter what is done people will figure out a way to Pirate music, karaoke, movies, software and anything they can can get their hands on.

There is no point to beating this dead horse anymore. Nothing is going to be done about it. And truly I can care less. I can cover my ass if someone comes knocking. I make good money, no one stealing Karaoke is effecting me.

My Points are facts.


OK then show me where you get your facts from.

First, the mandatory "godd Job!" That out of the way, if I'm reading your grapphs correctly, than 2005 and 2006 actually seem to mark the beginning of an upswing?

Also, I bet you'll find that the downswing ( sorry, here we go again) will be concurrent with availability of PC karaoke and pirate downloads, possibly connected to the proliferation of crappy $50 / nite shows run badly, killing karaoke popularity. That's THIS time. Each time a newer, cheaper way of running a show comes out, the same thing occurs. No facts or figures, just a train of thought and lengthy experience on my part. If you were to graph karaoke from the sheet lyric / cassette time of the 70's until now, I think you will find the 5-7 year up and down trend is actually the standard.

My experience has been that,for whatever reason, the upswing starts at a time of fewer hosts and mostly high quality shows, breeding more popularity, breeding crap show knock-offs, breeding less popularity, causing the crap shows to die out, leaving the best ones, which breed more popularity, and away we go.....