If You Are a Karaoke Host

We are 100% in favor of hosts who want to operate within the law, and the focus of the Verified Compliance Safe Harbor Program is to give karaoke venues the tools and incentives to hire legal hosts and to provide us with information about illegal hosts. We also help explain why legitimate hosts have to charge more for their services – because they have more invested. So, the VCSH Program should help legitimate hosts maintain their gigs against undercutting pirates and even defend their pricing (more legitimate songs and a better system means a bigger investment) to the venue.

Karaoke piracy is a big problem, and it's killing the karaoke industry. Even though karaoke is more popular than ever, karaoke producers like Sound Choice see fewer and fewer legitimate sales as karaoke hosts use illegal pirated music to put on their shows. When a karaoke host plays tracks from a hard drive without buying legal product to back up his files, that host is stealing from us.

No business can survive if 90% of its potential customers steal the product instead of buy it. To fight back, Sound Choice has begun suing karaoke hosts and venues for infringement of our intellectual property rights. We don't want to sue, but we are out of other options.

This program gives karaoke venues immunity from a Sound Choice suit for intellectual property infringement, as long as the venue takes a few simple steps to gather the basic information we need to ensure hosts operate legally. It is in your best interests to cooperate, because venues are effectively being encouraged to hire only the hosts who do cooperate and demonstrate that they are legal. Although it is 100% voluntary on your part, failure to comply puts your venue at risk and increases the likelihood that you might be named in a lawsuit.

It is therefore in your best interests to become compliant with the law, if you're operating illegally. If you do, we will work with you to provide a set of products with a volume discount and possibly even some financing.

This program won't make us popular with karaoke hosts who are operating illegally--but that's ok. We're interested in customers who will buy our products and help legal hosts get more value for their services, so they can continue buying our products and we can continue to produce them.

To learn more about the safe harbor:

Host FAQ
Lawsuit Information
Information for Venues | Venue FAQ

To sign up:

As a Host

As a Venue