Contests ... Good or Bad?

[alanross]

The question of what makes good Karaoke can be answered quite simply: Whatever appeals to an audience enough to keep them coming back.

From my perspective, we draw huge crowds because we have an excellent sound system which we use to focus on each vocalist. We tweak each song to bring out the best of each performance. We have very large crowds with usually a minority of people actually singing. Most of our audience comes out to watch.

Therefore, to me, the best Karaoke is Karaoke that is enjoyable for singers and non-singers alike.

Having said that, the only people who really enjoy the contests are the non-singing audience members. Contestants are always stressed, the host (me) is always under fire and the singers who don't want to be in the contest are stuck waiting for the contest to end before they can sing. Although we've fine tuned our contests to work far more efficiently than ever before, they are still a pain in the butt!