Hello everyone. I hope you have all had a great summer and a great start to harvest. I just noticed that we haven't posted in awhile, so we thought we'd would update you all on how everything has changed since Covid came on the scene, and where we are headed in the future.
2023 has been a very interesting year for karaoke. Inflation tended to hit bars harder than anticipated from 2020 until now, and many still haven't recovered. Karaoke is on a similar path. To give you some perspective, karaoke is commonly referred to as a "loss leader". Well what does that mean? It means that the bar will host a karaoke night and foot the expense in the hopes that it will draw in customers and singers. The cost of karaoke is already a predetermined expense, so the bar has to make those costs back in profit, not gross sales, alone before the end of the night to break even. That doesn't even consider other expenses involved like rent/mortgage, electric, water, products, staff expenses, etc. Since every one of these expenses are rising, karaoke is now considered to be non-essential, so the number of shows a year is naturally decreasing.
We'll will be the weird ones here since we're alright with it. In previous years, karaoke nights took up every single weekend without fail, so we would work our regular 9-5 and then host karaoke shows until the early hours. With this reduction, we should have some of our weekends back.
Now to get off of this morbid topic, We are planning to making a few quality of life changes at the end of 2023 through 2024:
- Hopefully in Q1 of 2024, we will be partnering again with SongBookDB for our digital sign ups. Their app and signup process seems to be more fluid and has a better end use experience than our current solution. Request management will also be easier on the DJ side, and their service will integrate with our software in more real time instead of having to monitor and manually add requests.
- We have made a goal that by the end of 2024, we would like to offer digital and paper signups for singers. Our venues have a healthy mix of ages from 20-90. The younger kids love the option to sign up and view from their phones without getting up, but our older crowd doesn't care for the technology. They usually will come up in person and sign up with the DJ. With having such a massive song database, and growing, we are having trouble making paper song books for them to browse since this database has to be manually reviewed, line by line, to look for duplicates, misspellings, and cross entries. Since these come from different suppliers, they have to be reviewed manually by hand before being put into the database. We have been working on reviewing through this by hand since 2021, and all new additions have already been reviewed and added. Once this process has finished, we do plan to have the option for paper song books and paper sign ups for those that would prefer this method.
- It is also new fun toy time. The tech is due for another upgrade. This means new sound equipment, new lighting, and new props.
- We have started to play with wireless tech to help with unique set up situations. When testing has concluded, we are planning an investment into wireless HDMI for existing bar/venue TVs as well as wireless XLR for better coverage of the full bar/venue. This is still in its early phases, so we hope to have something informally ready to go by Q3 2024.
Those are at least the upcoming plans that I can think of at this time, but I will keep you informed of any new developments and projects. And if you are a bar or venue owner, I will answer the burning question in your mind right now. NO, there are no plans for a rate increase. We plan to remain at the same price that we've been at since starting up in 2019. Just a little less worry off your back. :)
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