How to Stay Legal

This information reflects the views held by Sound Choice after consultation with its team of IP lawyers regarding trademark and copyright infringement, as well as policies that Sound Choice has implemented regarding the transfer of its content to hard drive-based systems. If you disagree and are looking for legal advice, please contact an attorney who concentrates his or her practice on intellectual property law.

Information for Karaoke Hosts on Running a Legal Show

If you use pirated material (any content that was not PURCHASED from an authorized reseller of Sound Choice CDGs or found on LICENSED MP3+G discs) for a commercial purpose, you are committing infringement of Sound Choice's intellectual property rights. For purposes of clarification and to eliminate any doubts, Sound Choice has NEVER authorized ANYONE to distribute our content on a hard drive or Super CDG disc or Cavs system.

Sound Choice sells its karaoke accompaniment tracks on CD+Gs and/or MP3+G data discs. If you are going to use Sound Choice® tracks for any commercial purpose, you must acquire those tracks on an original product from Sound Choice.

• If you acquired your Sound Choice® tracks via downloading, you may not use those tracks for any commercial purpose. Further, MOST sites offering Sound Choice® tracks are illegal sites and obtaining tracks from these sites, whether purchased or obtained free means you have acquired pirated tracks. If you have any questions as to which sites are legal sites for PERSONAL, home use, you should contact Sound Choice.
• If you acquired your Sound Choice® tracks by buying or otherwise acquiring a hard drive-based system (such as an external hard drive, a laptop, a desktop, a CAVS system, or another similar dedicated karaoke music player), with the tracks pre-loaded, you have acquired pirated tracks.

The Surest Way To Be Legal

Legal operation starts by acquiring an original Sound Choice® CD+G or MP3+G data disc for every track you intend to play at a show. You can buy legal CD+Gs from Sound Choice's online store or from the many authorized retailers. MP3+G discs are ONLY available directly from Sound Choice's on-line store. You can also find original CD+Gs for sale in the secondary market, such as through Craigslist and eBay. When buying CD+Gs in the secondary market, beware: There are many unscrupulous sellers in the marketplace. Be sure that you are getting original CDGs. Sound Choice's CDGs are pressed and printed, just like CDs of regular music you would buy in a store. If your CD is not original, it is not legal.

Running Karaoke on Computer, CAVS, or Other Hard Drive Systems

If you don't want to play from CDs, we understand. A large collection of CDs takes up a lot of space. Bringing your CDs to a venue exposes them to theft and loss. CDs can get scratched from too much handling. IF you choose the convenience of a hard drive system, we understand the technical reasons for doing so. But, let’s be clear: For legal reasons, Sound Choice does not authorize the use of hard drive systems to play our karaoke music commercially. But we will agree not to sue you for "media-shifting" the contents of our CD+Gs or MP3+G discs if you follow our media-shifting policy.

Our media-shifting policy requires you to maintain a "one-to-one" correspondence between your CD+Gs or MP3+G discs and the other medium. To determine one-to-one correspondence, we look at the other medium, usually a hard drive. For every Sound Choice® track on that hard drive, you must own an original Sound Choice CD+G or MP3+G disc that contains that track. The hard drive track and the CD+G or MP3+G track are assigned to each other. Once you've assigned a CD+G track to a hard drive track, you have to put that CD+G or MP3+G disc "on the shelf." It can't be used anywhere else, nor can it be sold, unless it is first removed from your hard drive.

If you have any track on your hard drive for which you do not own an original disc, that track must be deleted from your hard drive. It does not matter if you once owned the disc, but lost it, sold it or had it stolen. The track must be deleted.

Examples of One-To-One

Let's say you have two hard drive systems, each with the same content. In that case, for each track you have, you need two disc tracks, one for each hard drive. That means you need to own two original copies of the disc.

If you have one hard drive system and one CD-only system, the same rules apply. If you put the contents of your discs onto the hard drive system, you have to put your discs "on the shelf." You cannot use those discs to also play a show using your disc based system.

If you have even one track on a hard drive that does not meet this policy, all of your media-shifting activities are unauthorized, and you could be sued.

After looking at this policy, if you think you're not legal, please contact us to discuss a special program we have in place to help karaoke hosts get legal. We have discounts and payment plans available on large quantities of discs; unfortunately, if you acquired an illegal hard drive, many of the songs are no longer available since the discs are out-of-print and you will have to delete them from your system. And it's better for you to contact us first, because we have investigators visiting karaoke shows virtually every night of the year in an ever expanding number of cities. If we contact you first, it will be more expensive to resolve this problem.

To learn more:

Information for Venues | Venue FAQ
Information for Hosts | Host FAQ
Lawsuit Information

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