How many song books to you bring to a show?

[Bi-Polar Bear]

Originally Posted by Lonman

I disagree with this. People will judge how good you are by 'how good you are'. I have literally seen very successful shows that purposely run no more than 1000 songs - carefully picked by the history reports of their software programs (praying Hoster adds this to theirs) so they can see what is popular & what is not. This particular show is packed every karaoke night & the book is literally 1" thick. The host is very attentive to the sound & can keep the crowd entertained. Now is this the norm, probably not. Would I attempt to cut my 11K book down to 1000, most likely not. But the size of a book has nothing to do with how good you are.

I didn't mean to say it had anything to do with how good you are. I'm speaking of perception... and people perceive you to a great extent by your presentation. Now if you and your gear and books look like a million dollars and your show sucks... that's a different story. But if all things are equal, appearance is key in my 18 year experience.

[Lonman]

Originally Posted by Bi-Polar Bear

I didn't mean to say it had anything to do with how good you are. I'm speaking of perception... and people perceive you to a great extent by your presentation. Now if you and your gear and books look like a million dollars and your show sucks... that's a different story. But if all things are equal, appearance is key in my 18 year experience.

Only 17 years in the game here on the pro side & I still don't know if i'd agree with this - will agree that you can have the best of everything & still have a crappy show, but you can also have a crap system & if you know what you're doing, make it sound tolerable to decent as well to make a nice sounding show.
I get this statement all the time from people - I go to so & so show & they have over 50K (or more) songs & you seem to have a much better selection. Then they go on to explain that the other books have like 5 duplicates of most songs (if not more on many). This is when I go on to explain & try to educate them that companies like this will go on the perception that bigger is better & will list everything they have even if includes listing duplicates & bad quality versions to make their book appear bigger & better when in fact they probably actually have less of what people actually want to sing. Have even had hosts that come in wondering where I got certain songs because they can't get them (even illegally).
A bigger book doesn't always mean better selection.

[Bi-Polar Bear]

well here in Barneyland my selection is unmatched by anyone. When people ask me why there are dups I tell them because there are different maunfacturers of the same disc and I will pick out the best version for them. People many times will automatically pick sound choice for instance but because I know the difference I can many times call up a better version. My people appreciate that.

And there's a reason people use the bigger is better philosophy. By and large, it works. I have 5, 10 and 16 year accounts that still pack out.... and my venues are called on 3 or 4 times every week by people offering to undercut my price, so something's working.

[mindonstrike]

Originally Posted by Bi-Polar Bear

well here in Barneyland my selection is unmatched by anyone. When people ask me why there are dups I tell them because there are different maunfacturers of the same disc and I will pick out the best version for them. People many times will automatically pick sound choice for instance but because I know the difference I can many times call up a better version. My people appreciate that.

I had a KJ do that to me one time and it ticked me off no end. I put up an SC version of a song where he had a bunch of dups. I get up to sing and up pops a laser disk version of the song. I immediately inquired about it and was told it was a "better" version. I responded that, that might be true but I was counting on the SC version and that's the one i'd like. He had to stop the show and hunt for the right disk.

That song may or may not have been a better version or it may have just been his opinion because he'd been playing it for years before the SC version came out. Either is irrelevant.

[goonie227]

Originally Posted by Bi-Polar Bear

well here in Barneyland my selection is unmatched by anyone. When people ask me why there are dups I tell them because there are different maunfacturers of the same disc and I will pick out the best version for them. People many times will automatically pick sound choice for instance but because I know the difference I can many times call up a better version. My people appreciate that.

And there's a reason people use the bigger is better philosophy. By and large, it works. I have 5, 10 and 16 year accounts that still pack out.... and my venues are called on 3 or 4 times every week by people offering to undercut my price, so something's working.

Around here I have a bunch of people that have to sing the version they have at home it even forced me to buy the sava discs that all suck in my opinion.

[gd123]

None, which there is NO choice.

[bryant]

Originally Posted by gd123

None, which there is NO choice.

Sure there is none is LESS than four.


9category = "four or less".

I think that category has actually been used for those that are paperless.

[alpfleger]

I bring 4 artist and 4 title and something else. I bring a cheap used laptop that has an old Sax & Dotty show presenter program on it. I attach an external hard drive to the laptop and then I set up the sax & Dotty software with the drive that has all my songs. It scans the drive where my folders are . Then I detach the drive. I can then search by artist or title and it finds the songs tracks and artists, but it can't play them. The singer writes out the song slip and they love it!

[Roy Dennis]

I print 7 of my books with only about 5000 songs with no duplicates. I have them by Artist & by Title with pages at the back for Duets & New additions which are usually the latest pop songs. The first page explains that these books only show the most popular songs and if they can't find their favorite song to just write down their Title & Artist and I will Do My Best To find It. It is not very often I can't find what they want. The biggest problem with singers is they don't always know the proper title. I use 100 leaf display pockets which gives you 200 pages. with these you don't get problems with pages falling out like you do with ring binders. I have another 2 books 1 of which is Artist & 1 by Title. but I rarely give these out. they have about 14,000 songs in each and almost fill the 200 page leaf displays.

This seems to work fine with my singers.