Karaoke disc production
How a song gets from a gleam in the musician's eye to a karaoke disc starts with the publisher making his deal with the songwriter for the publishing rights. Included in these publishing rights is sheet music, video rights, and a whole slew of rights that normal people wouldn't even think about! What's happened in the last 10 years is there's been a karaoke right: the right to display the words on the screen, the right to re-record the song, and limited use of that rendition.

Producers of karaoke pay the publishing companies for this package of rights to re-create the songs or alter original tracks, to put them into different keys and such. Although you can buy stereos that turn down the vocals of original songs for a home-baked version of karaoke, this is not the case with legitimate karaoke, in which the original artist's tracks are rarely used! Some artists (or the owners of their catalogue) withhold the so-called "karaoke rights". Often if a popular song isn't available in the Karaoke format it means the 'Karaoke rights' have been denied.

Just because a Karaoke song have been available in the past doesn't guarantee they will be available in the future. Although uncommon you may purchase a disc minus one song! This is noted on the disc as 'intentionally deleted'. For example a disc with 15 songs on it has track 5 'intentionally deleted'. This means the new pressing has gone ahead but the producers were unable to obtain the rights to repress this song in the Karaoke version.

There's a lot of time involved in producing Karaoke discs and with the average price of $4.00 - $5.00 per song - it's what's known as a 'mean deal' in the music industry. It's difficult to understand why anyone would want to pirate a Karaoke disc for the backing at this price (especially as a singer or musician they are just robbing their own kind).

How Laser Direct produce Karaoke discs
A group of specialists in the music studio assure all songs are as close as possible to the original backings. Using the right mix of musicians and backing vocalists who can copy the original sounds are paramount. Songs are submitted to APRA for approval and copyrights are paid. The whole Laser Direct team gets involved in producing New Zealand songs for the local and overseas market. From selecting the songs (with lots of customer input), researching the artist, songwriter/composer and finding the lyrics to each song.

Once the sound tracks are completed, the backing vocalists come in and do their job. The sound tracks (with backing vocals) are then imported to a professional Karaoke computer program which allows the lyrics to be displayed on screen and married up to the backings. Songs are checked and double checked for spelling mistakes and the on-screen lyricist makes sure the words have the right font size, text format and number of words per frame (so it's easy to read for singers). Graphics are loaded to add a professional finish.

While all the above is a hive of activity, our talented graphic designer is working on the CD sleeve and disc images. Often we will discuss a concept and then a pencil scamp will be done. The design is often hand coloured and scanned to a computer for further enhancements. Each disc has original artwork on the CD cover and CD. Once all has been completed and checked by our team a master disc is pressed ready to send off to a recording studio that can handle the sub codes for Karaoke. All the months of hard work is forgotten the moment a kiwi song is played!