SiliconBeat: Singshot offers online social karaoke; fun for children

Singshot is a San Francisco start-up that lets you do karaoke online. It is also the latest company to join the fad of holding American Idol-like talent competitions for its users.

Back when we first wrote about this company, it still hadn't launched, but we thought the idea was a "long-shot." The company launches in testing mode today, and after playing with the product last week, we've changed our mind.

The question remains, whether it will make money. But at least Singshot is biting the bullet, and charging a $9.95 per month subscription (after two-week trial), and cheaper options if you subscribe for longer periods. It is clean and fun enough, in our view, for plenty of people to begin using it. And unlike the landscape for video and photo sites, there's not much competition for music-only karaoke sites. There's one major player, kSolo. Because it is newer, SingShot is letting you embed the songs you create into other sites, giving it a hip edge. You also don't have to download anything.

Singshot lets you select a song, and then it writes the lyrics on the screen, so that you can sing along. You can also listen to the song's original lyrics, so that you can practice.

When your voice is merged with the music, the song is saved, and users can rate them and comment on them. You can save it as either a private or a public song. Congrats to DekeSharon for leading the charts so far with Drift Away, among others.

Singhot has more features than competitor Ksolo. As mentioned, Singshot lets you embed your songs, via Singshot's media player, into your profiles on Myspace and other sites. It also lets you tag songs. Finally, kSolo was bought by Fox, and so Singshot is open to strike partnerships with media companies that may not want to partner with Fox, according to Singshot chief executive Ranah Edelin.

The founders include Edelin, Niranjan Nagar, and Sean Ryan, who were early employees at Listen.com, which built the Rhapsody music service and was bought by Real Networks, Inc. in 2003 for $36 million.

Edelin told us they will first focus on building a community of users before going after sponsored competitions -- where companies offer prizes for contests to build their brand. Singshot have licensed 2,500 songs for their online Karaoke bar.

Singshot has raised $1 million in February from Transcosmos Investments, the VC arm of the Japanese IT outsourcing firm.

Posted by Matt Marshall on July 30, 2006 10:33 PM | Linking Posts

Tags: Singshot Transcosmos

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Hi Matt,

Thanks for this interesting post. A friend of mine is an avid karaoke singer. She has her own machine at home connecting to a nice sound system and has a good collection of songs that she loves to sing. I suspect my friend and (based on a sample size of one) other avid k-singers will rather use their own systems for fun or practice. And man, listen to the re-recording singer that sings the demo version of Tom Jones' "It's Not Unusual" in Singshot makes me wish I didn't click that play button. :( And my gut feeling tells me the casual k-singers won't pay the subscription fee.

Of course, vanity is a different matter. And I am sure some people are willing to pay to get their songs be heard and shared by others. (This may be the whole point.) And some want to be famous too (witness the popularity of format like American or Canadian Idol, etc. by FremantleMedia in 32 territories). How many of these people will pay and want to be seen online in these websites is a different matter. May be these companies simply have really low cost and can generate lots of revenue, I don't know.

These are my 2 cents.

Cheers,
Kempton
--------------------
P.S. My favourite show is the upcoming CBC Dragons' Den which has more information at
http://www.insidethedragonsden.com/

Kempton on July 31, 2006 7:21 AM
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We tried Ksolo and were a bit disappointed.

I did notice another new online karaoke player with 7,000 songs which was Adobe's site of the day a couple of weeks ago called www.internetkaraoke.net -excellent.

It is also jukebox style with no registration or subscriptions, just pay as you go.

matt on July 31, 2006 11:24 AM
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Internetkaraoke.net is the preferred favourite - with over 7,000 songs - including one's you actually know - and a full Flash interface that works on ALL platforms it's the definitive online karaoke jukebox.

James Rowley on July 31, 2006 1:02 PM
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I agree with Matt & James - have been visiting the internetkaraoke.net site for a couple of months - easy to use with great sound quality & lots & lots of favourites. Found this site a bit confusing.....

Also, don't like a commitment to a subscription service - pay as you go for me every time.

Gordon Watson on July 31, 2006 1:28 PM
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