Site Review: The Karaoke Channel Online
I love karaoke! Ever since I tried it at our senior party in high school, I loved the experience. I am always nervous at first, but then I get into the song and do a decent job. At least that is my humble opinion. My one main problem is I find it hard to just let loose and try many different songs. Knowing I’ll only get one or two tries, I carefully pick out a couple songs I feel like singing and know I’ll be good at. That is all changing with the internet.
The Karaoke Channel Online aims to be the ultimate online karaoke experience. Do they live up to that goal? I was given the opportunity to check it out.
The website is build in flash and comes with several pay options. The first option is free where you have banner ads and access to over 200 songs. From there you can pay $9.95/month, $99.95/year, or $14.95/24 hours and have an ad-free website with access to thousands of songs.
The flash-based interface seemed simple enough at first. Looking for music was simple, you can either browse or just type in an artist, song, or some of the lyrics in to the search box. Once you find a song, you just click the play immediately button or add it to a queue so you can sing a bunch of songs at at time.
My initial problem was when trying to sing that first song, I thought my microphone wasn’t working properly. I couldn’t hear myself sing in the headphones as I was singing. Doing a bunch of test concluded one of two things, my computer had a problem (hey it is over 5 years old), or their software had a problem. After an email to support, they pointed out the error of my thinking. You won’t hear yourself sing in headphones as you sing. Now I can understand someone using their built-in mic would have a bad echo problem if they pumped your vocals through the speakers, but as a podcaster, I am always listening to myself to make sure things are working as I expect. I would suggest an option to allow the vocals to go through headphones for people like me.
For all of the songs I tried, the music seemed to be done by some sort of a cover band. So you may be a bit surprised the first time you try to sing a song and the music doesn’t sound quite the way you expect. While this doesn’t take away from the service, it is a quirk that I immediately noticed. They currently have over 4300 songs on the site and I was able to find many of my favorite songs. They are rapidly adding new songs so if you don’t see your favorite song there today, check back next week. Don’t expect any independent bands on the site to start with, however, but I would hope they consider this in the future. I did find Panic at the Disco which is on the Podsafe Music Network and attempted to sing it. While I didn’t save that recording, I do have a decent rendition of Help Pour Out The Rain from Buddy Jewel that I have made public on my profile.
One other feature I hope to see is the ability to share your recorded song with others outside of their site; either through an embeded flash player or a direct link into the website to your recording.
For me, I am not sure it would be worth the money in order to get rid of the occasional karaoke bug, but I can see setting something up for a party for a low-cost do-it-yourself option. As it stands now, I would suggest you to at least go check out the free version if you love karaoke.
