SINGA VS KARAFUN
BEST KARAOKE SYSTEM FOR MY MOBILE KARAOKE BUSINESS

With over ten years of KJ (Karaoke Jockey) experience, I have used my fair share of Karaoke systems and the way the technology has evolved. Personally, I found that the best solution to be Virtual DJ which runs on a laptop with all my Karaoke Tracks on an external hard drive.

This setup really is the go-to for most Karaoke Jockeys you will see out in the pubs and clubs, however, somewhere in the back of my mind there has always been a bit of an amateur feel to it. There is something dated and a bit unrefined about having all your tracks being from different sources. It is a bit of a mess aesthetically.

A lot of the tracks I have come across on these older setups do sound a bit like they were composed on an old Nokia 3310, and that is hard to sing along to even for some of the more talented amongst the crowd. The whole experience becomes a little cheap and unfulfilling for your punters.

Now your classic Karaoke set up will have slips of paper getting thrust at you, which is nigh impossible to keep track of, and not to mention the dreaded updating of printed songbooks which end up with pints of beer poured all over them.

This leads me on to what is available now, and what I have been using when hosting. For the past two years, I have been running my Karaoke nights with an iPad, The apps available for Karaoke have done nothing but progress over the years with many choices available for a professional set up, however, in my eyes, there are only two contenders and they are Karafun and Singa.

I have used both systems over the course of the last two years and they each have brilliant benefits to them. This is my experience in using both systems and highlights some of the key points any KJ would want in a karaoke system.

We touched earlier on the slips of paper we KJ’s have historically had to contend with. Scribbled song requests on soggy bits of paper from resting on a wet bar. The karaoke jockey squinting their eyes to try and make out the handwriting and what the hell that song could possibly be.

Both of these karaoke providers offer a slick modern solution to this problem by solution utilising mobile devices and the internet.

With Singa, the requesting of songs is very simple for singers as the app can be downloaded to their mobile device.

Once they have the app, they can find the venue using the location and then browse the catalogue to request a song. The app also has the facility for the singer to change the key and tempo to better suit their own vocal range.

The drawback for me here is that users must download the app, create an account, find the venue, search the catalogue, and then finally request their song. This is a lot of steps to ask of someone especially after a few drinks when back in the day it was just a slip of paper they wrote on.

Luckily Singa provides the option to set up a request kiosk with an iPad which you can place in the venue and users can browse songs and request from there.

Searching for songs in Singa is straight forward and makes it easy to find exactly what you’re looking for, if you’re unsure what you want then you can filter by genre as well, I’ve found this feature gives my users inspiration and make song choices they ordinarily wouldn’t do.

With Karafun they do not offer an App for requesting tracks, however, instead, they generate a URL which singers can visit on any device to browse the catalogue and request. The URL changes every time you log in which can be frustrating for KJ’s looking to print out QR codes for flyers to put on tables.

Personally, I like this approach it means that I don’t need to do any work on the backend as in set up a new venue for every new place I play. It gives you the option to have the URL and QR code display on the screen which is a bonus. As for printing out the QR codes to display on tables, I got around this by using NFC chips instead and writing the URL to the chips at the beginning of the night.

Personally, as someone who plays in different venues all the time Karafun is the better solution for me here. I play to a different crowd most weeks, and nine times out of ten they won’t have the Singa app so requesting songs can be a drawn-out affair for a new user.

Having said that the overall look and feel of Singa is much nicer and is a lot easier for users to navigate to find songs.

Karafuns search capabilities are very scattered take this example below for instance.

I wanted to find songs by Chris Stapleton so searched on Singa which was nice and simple displayed the songs that were available plus an artist profile I can jump into to view everything they have by him.

On KaraFun however it was a mash-up of everything by someone called Chris, I then realised that cause the “s” in Stapleton wasn’t capitalised after I capitalised the S it then showed me the whole catalogue of Chris Stapleton songs.

The quality of the tracks on offer really reflects on you and your business, so the last thing you want is to come across looking like a cheap amateur. The tracks themselves set the mood for the whole evening as people want great-sounding music, even if the vocals on top aren’t always so great!

The Singa catalogue has over 80,000 songs to choose from, but only about 50,000 of them are unique the rest are duplicate versions. Now, this isn’t a bad thing, countless times ill have regular karaoke goers requesting a specific karaoke version of a song which Singa delivers.

The downside here you would think is the constant harassment of people asking which version do I pick, again Singa has you covered and allows you to remove the duplicates and only display the top-rated karaoke tracks.

Now the quality of the tracks is pretty solid, but they still miss some of the fundamental songs for any karaoke night, one in particular being, “The Kooks – Naïve” I get requested this all the time and they still do not have it.

According to Singa they now offer you the ability to upload your own karaoke tracks to your account but currently, I can’t see this option within the Singa App or the business portal.

With Karafun you get access to over 39,000 unique karaoke tracks. The quality of these tracks is spot on as KaraFun use tracks from Karaoke Version which in my opinion make the best karaoke tracks as well as other sources.

The catalogue is solid and pretty much has every song I need to host a karaoke night, what I really like about this is the access you get to the community catalogue where Karaoke Jockeys around the world can share karaoke songs they have uploaded.

You also have the option to connect to their integral catalogue which gives you access to even more tracks. To access this, you need to obtain authorisation form the proper legal collecting society e.g PRS, BMI etc.

In terms of quality, they are both pretty much spot on and both offer the ability to change the Key and Tempo of the song before and during the song.

However, only KaraFun has the ability to remove or add backing vocals, lead vocals, or instruments from the tracks either before or during the song.

This is particularly useful when a singer has lost their place in the song you can just bring the lead vocals up so they know exactly where they are.

Singa display left, Karafun display right

The quality of the tracks on offer really reflects on you and your business, so the last thing you want is to come across looking like a cheap amateur. The tracks themselves set the mood for the whole evening as people want great-sounding music, even if the vocals on top aren’t always so great!

Overall, the look of it is pretty slick, it’s quite easy to search for songs using the search bar and it has a nice queue section you can view to see who’s singing next.

From a singer’s point of view, the lyrics display nice and bold, they also use different images behind the lyrics to mix it up a bit. What I really like is that you can choose whether to display the list of singers in the queue at the bottom of the screen so everyone in the venue knows when they are next.

Offline Mode

To play the songs in offline mode Singa has said that you can download the entire catalogue to an iPad which takes up near enough about 1tb of space. this means you will need an iPad Pro with the highest storage capacity to do this.

Now I haven’t done this as at the time I was using Singa this capability was not built-in. But from what I know using Singa is that you need to connect a lightning to HDMI adapter to display video and a headphone input for the audio, but the iPad Pro does not have a headphone input so I’m not sure if Singa will even work with an iPad Pro.

Screen Advertising

The one thing that I really love about Singa is the screen advertisements. With Singa you can display custom screen advertisements in between singers which can potentially be a source of revenue for your karaoke business and potentially pay for your subscription just from the advertising alone. In the past, I’ve signed up taxi firms in the area and charged them a small fee to advertise on my screens. This also works as a selling point with venues to help promote any in-house offers they want to push.

Now KaraFun has a few tricks up its sleeve, you can change the opacity of the graphic that is displayed behind the lyrics meaning you can make it darker and go black if you want.

You can also add an image to the background of a karaoke track too, this is a great feature, unfortunately, you can only do this to each track one by one which means you would have to do this over 39,000 times to change the whole catalogue which makes this feature quite pointless.

White Label

The thing I really like about Karafun is that you can upload your own company logo to display on the waiting screen and the karaoke track screen helping you push your brand further.

Offline Mode

To download the entire catalogue you need about 200GB of space for all 39,000 tracks which is a lot lower than Singa’s 1TB, you can also choose to download small chunks of tracks like the top 10,000 or individual select tracks to sync offline.

Screen Ads

Now the one thing KaraFun doesn’t offer is screen advertisements which I think is its biggest floor as this could be a big moneymaker for any KJ. I have spoken with KaraFun regarding this and there are no plans right now to implement this but they have taken my suggestion on board. Fingers crossed this feature makes the cut.

Upload Photos

One thing Karafun does offer however is the ability for your guests to upload photos that display on-screen during a karaoke track, I personally love this feature as it allows my punters to be more interactive with the karaoke. With great power comes great responsibility and as you can imagine this feature sometimes gets abused with the odd dick pic making its way to the screen, luckily Karafun gives you the option to disable this feature if needed.

Upload photo feature in Karafun feat Boadi

I think it really comes down to personal preference really, I really like the look of Singa from a Singers point of view, not to mention the extra income to be made from screen advertisements. But KaraFun has the ability to white label their product meaning you can really push your own branding.

When there is no one singing you can’t just have dead silence you need to bridge that gap with some filler music to link each singer and both systems solutions to do so.

So Singa has two options Singa Radio and Linking your Spotify account. The Singa radio is well… background music for sure but it’s not what you think. They use these cover versions of popular songs which are ok but it’s clear that these are not the originals.

Singa background music settings

Linking up your Spotify account is simple and you can make a playlist that will automatically play when no one is singing. The only problem is that it is against Spotify’s terms of service to use Spotify in a commercial setting which means that you can’t use this feature unless you are at home.

So KaraFun offers 5 different sound files to play between each singer automatically, I’ll be honest they are completely unuseable in a bar or private event. No-one comes out to hear royalty-free stock music.

They do however on the desktop version allow you to upload your own tracks and create a playlist which is the only option you can go with in my opinion.

Both systems are floored in this department though KaraFun has the only viable option to play actual music that will not get you in trouble with PRS.

I’ve found the best option is to just have your Laptop on another input on your mixer and crossfade between the two.

I do however think that both companies have missed a big trick here, as VDJ’s (Video Disc Jockeys) are becoming more and more popular they should play music videos in between singers.

Probably the most important aspect of this whole list, how much is this going to set my business back. Both offer different pricing points to suit your business needs.

With Singa you have two options Singa Lite, and Singa Business Pro. Singa Lite costs £79 a month which only includes the 80,000 songs that can only be streamed.

Singa Business Pro however offers all the features you would need to run an effective mobile karaoke business but comes in at a whopping £120 a month.

But this cost can be minimised if you really take advantage of the screen advertisement feature in Singa which can be a big moneymaker, and if implemented correctly pay for the software itself.

This is by far the cheapest option coming in at £79 a month for all the features you need to get started. You can also cancel your subscription at any time.

What I also like about KaraFun is that they offer a weekly pro pass option for £39 as well, meaning, you don’t have to commit to a full month if you only have one weeks’ worth of bookings.

It’s a difficult one, I think if you know you can secure advertisement agreements then Singa is the solution for you but if your just looking for a karaoke solution to bring you into the 21^st Century then KaraFun would be the way to go with its flexible pricing structure.

So, there you have it the pros and cons of both systems, karaoke streaming technology is still in the early stages when compared to hosting karaoke the old-fashioned way.  which is why there is no perfect solution right now in my opinion. Both companies are constantly making changes to the software and hopefully, we will have something that ticks all the boxes soon.

Below I have listed all the features both systems have to offer, the Singa column reflects the features in their Business Pro plan

Remember if you’re looking to hire a modern solution to karaoke you can visit our booking form to request more information, if you are looking to install a karaoke system in your business then we can assist you there too

Singa: https://singa.com/business/

Karafun: https://www.karafun.co.uk/pro/