Originally Posted by Tamastara
Everyone will probably hate me for saying this, but depending on the size of the room, really bad singers can lose you business.
I work in a small karaoke place that's known for its selection (collected over 10 years by myself) & professional equipment, including a Mackie 808M head & speakers, Shure 58 mics (those things are $600 a pop), & regular crowd of classic rock & 80s enthusiasts. There are a number of professional singers in our regular crowd & we are a regular hang out for local rock musicians. Our regular crowd has shaped itself over the years into a small community of people who appreciate music that sounds good, & come to our place because of the caliber of the karaoke on most nights.
We're small --- like 5 tables & perhaps 5 seats at the bar. The regulars all know eachother & there's a lot of great dueting & harmonizing most nights. Recently a newspaper wrote a stunning review about our place - completely unsolicited by us - & suddenly we were invaded by hordes of newcomers who had no idea how to behave in a 5-table hole in the wall. Dancing on chairs, 10-man singalongs, girls gone wild action --- all this is well & good in certain (larger) bars, but in ours it's just ugly.
Bad singers in our place, if given the mic more than a few songs, will actually cause our regulars to ask for their tabs & go home. The problem is, our regulars spend waaaay more money than the tourists. We have fellows who leave $20-$50 tips, just for themselves, regardless of what their tab was. And they tip that way because they enjoyed themselves.
Just the other week I served 3 tone deaf newcomers who, between the 3 of them ordered 2 glasses of water, then turned in an order for 7 songs. We don't have a drink minimum because we've never needed to. When their songs came up, these folks then screamed, jumping up & down, at the top of their lungs. There was no quality, just a large quantity --- of noise.
The thing about having a room of musicians or good singers is that you basically have a room of people with good hearing, better than the average person, simply because it comes along with playing music. So when something like this happens, the level of torture for your people with good ears is much worse than in other situations.
When they paid their $7 tab at the end of the night, after having taken up table space for 2 hours, they tipped $1. Fortunately they hadn't chased any regulars out.
It's just not worth it.
They did come in again night before last, & while I didn't deny them their right to spend $3 on 3 songs & nothing on their glasses of water, I did scatter their songs as widely as I could to minimize the suffering of my regulars. At the end of the night, if any songs had to be bumped, it was going to be theirs. It sounds unfair but then again I'm the one who makes the rules.
Our situation is probably a unique one; chances are most of you karaoke hosts have to put up with way more than I ever have, but when we opened this bar the intention was to have quality, not quantity, & we worked hard to make it this way. I fully admit that I am a snob.
Sometimes bad singers do need to be managed.
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