While the files are uploading, let me explain what it is for those who haven't been following...
If you find this boring, just download the collection when it is ready and enjoy it!
But if you are interested...
I have been a KJ for 25 years and over that time I amassed a good collection of songs.
I never took the full collection out with me, I just chose my favourite version of each song, and took out a much smaller collection. Space was at a premium in those days!
However, recently, more of my singers are asking for specific versions of songs so I thought it was time to start taking out the full collection.
So, I looked for it.... and looked, but the hard drive had vanished!
So I needed a new “fuller” collection from somewhere...
Luckily, I found the upload from member DaveyDee which seemed to fit the bill.
It had a good selection of companies represented.
So I downloaded it...
Although I am extremely thankful to DaveyDee for taking the time to make this available, my OCD could not leave it as it was.
Although the files are organised very well, and named quite well, hardly any are tagged.
In fact, when I loaded it into an MP3 Tag editor, it looked a complete mess.
So over the last couple of months I have been straightening it out.
What has this involved?
I took each manufacturer in turn and have done the following:
Do an initial pass trying to make sense of the album names.
Using KSLC and Karaokeinfo.com I have renamed all the albums so that a “sort by album” puts them all in a sensible order.
Then, try to make sense of the tags.
Most had no tags, and those that are tagged are all over the place with no consistency.
Everybody has their own idea of how to tag things properly, so even with the best will in the world, if you get things from multiple places, the tags will be done in multiple different ways.
For instance.
Artist: Elvis Presley or Presley, Elvis
Title: Now and then There's A fool Such as I or (Now And Then) There's A Fool Such As I etc.
And that is a best case scenario.
So, a sort by title or artist would have songs all over the place.
Things were just plain wrong, even within one album there would be some named: artist then title and some named: title then artist, making it all very confusing to look at.
I use Virtual DJ and when displayed on screen it just looked like garbage!
So I started getting all the artists in the artist column and all the titles in the title column.
At this time, any “extras” such as (Duet) or (Explicit) were all moved to the same place – after the title.
Once that was done, I simplified the artists.
Remove “The” from the beginning of band names.
Afrojack, Pitbull ft Ne Yo
Pitbull Ft. Ne Yo & afrojack
Ne-Yo Pitbull feat Afrojack
Pitbull, Afrojack, Ne Yo
would become:
Pitbull, Ne-Yo & Afrojack
Pitbull, Ne-Yo & Afrojack
Pitbull, Ne-Yo & Afrojack
Pitbull, Ne-Yo & Afrojack
All special, difficult to type characters have been removed so now we have
Beyonce, KeSha, Motorhead etc. No inflections or foreign characters that would make searching more difficult.
Then sort by title and look for differences we can pull together.
Baby Love listed as being by Supremes, and also Diana Ross & The Supremes.
Many duets by Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers but also Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton.
Some Bob Seger, Some Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band.
Bryan Ferry or Roxy Music
Four Seasons or Frankie Valli Or Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons
Jackson Five or Jackson 5
The list is endless.
Basically standardise it as much as possible.
Next look for mistakes.
Mistakes in spelling.
Johnny Jonny Jon John
Patty Patti
etc.
Just keep straightening everything out.
Once I was happy I moved on to the next manufacturer and repeated the process.
When they all were straightened out as much as possible, it was time to load the full collection in all at once and start the process again.
Time consuming, mind numbing, & hard on the eyes!
Every time I came across a file that wasn't what it said it was then I would check all tracks on that album.
It's amazing how many albums have the tracks labelled incorrectly or in the wrong order.
This took weeks and weeks.
Then I played all of the medleys and listed all tracks within the medley.
Next I looked for all songs that don't have graphics (Mainly Priddis) and removed them.
Next, I removedthe vast majority songs I found that had full vocals or MPX vocals on the right channel.
I have left some children's songs with sing-along vocals.
So we are left with what I hope is a really good karaoke collection without too much that is unnecessary or distracting for the average KJ, and is much much easier to read from within music software than any other I have come across.
What haven't I done?
I have not played every song - Nowhere close.
I have probably played a fraction, so I am sure there are still errors lurking in there.
Please report any errors if you find them!
Any song that had (Duet) listed, I just left it as is.
Other versions of that same song that didn't have (Duet) listed... I did not check to see if they were actually duets.
Next I checked my own collection and wherever I found a higher quality version of a song, I would swap it in.
So what is in the collection?
Around 178,000 tracks from the following manufacturers:
Aaron Aardvark
Abraxa
All-Star Karaoke
Ameri-Sing
Backstage Karaoke
Bright Spark
Chartbuster
Country Classics Karaoke
Dancing Frog Karaoke
Demon Music Group
Disney
DK Karaoke
Doctor Music
Easy Hits
Essential Karaoke
FastTrax
Funbox
Gnome
Hazz
Homestar
JVC
Karaoke Version
Laughing Gnome
Legends
Monster Hits
Mr. Entertainer
Music Factory Classic Karaoke
Music Maestro
NorthStar Country
PaddyOke
Passion House
Pioneer
Pocket Songs
Pocket Songs Just Tracks
Pop Hits
Priddis
Protrax
PWK forgotten Hits
Quick Hitz
Radio Starz
SBI
Showtime Karaoke
Sing King
Sing To The World
Sound Choice
Specials (odd one-off tracks)
Stage Stars
StarDisc
Sunfly
SuperCore
Swamp Rat
Sweet Georgia Brown
Sybersound / Party Tyme
Tip Top
Top Tunes
Vocal Star
Xtreme
Zoom
You may notice it does not include Dreamcatcher Karaoke or CC home-made.
I may add these later but they need extra work for various reasons.
The collection is being uploaded as we speak - UNZIPPED.
I have found it much easier to work with it this way.
It does not actually make that much difference to the size.
You can't zip an MP3 to make it any smaller – it is already compressed, so the only gain you get is by compressing the .CDG
The down side is it is more difficult to work with the collection when you are bulk-altering many many files, plus the zipping/unzipping process is prone to errors.
I found hundreds of files that had zipping errors.
I know from experience everybody has their own way of doing things so some people will not agree with everything I have done.
I will certainly accept constructive criticism but don't want to get bogged down in “you should have done this” or “that's crap” type of messages.
Anybody is welcome to do their own clean-up in their own way if they think mine is not to their liking.
(If you are used to using apps such as MP3Tag you should be able to make changes quite easily to suit your own needs...)
Anything constructive will be considered for a V2 of the collection.
Please note, you MUST use this from the root directory of your drive.
e.g.
D:/KARAOKE
or
F:/KARAOKE
Not
D:/My Music/KARAOKE
The reason being this will make some of the really long medleys go over the 255 character file-path limit and so may not play in certain players or on certain versions of Windows.
I hope all my hundreds of hours work will prove useful to a few people.
PS On my to-do list I was going to go through the collection and just keep the highest quality version of each song from each manufacturer.
So, in other words, instead of 8 Sound Choice, 6 Sunfly and 7 Zoom versions of the same song, we just have one from each manufacturer. The best one available.
This will take a long time and I don't have the energy at the moment, but I will do it!
Lee.