Easy Karaoke
Background
Easy Karaoke are the UK’s largest creator of Karaoke content. With over 3000 tracks, their traditional distribution channel was through a dealer network covering the UK (with some international scope). The content was distributed on ‘CD+G’ discs, typically released once a month, reflecting the chart of the time. The typical customer was a ‘Karaoke Jock’ who would run Karaoke evenings in local pubs and venues.
Since then they’ve moved substantially into the consumer market, with an increasing proportion of their content delivered electronically and through highs street chains such as Toys’R’Us.
My Role
I’ve been working with Easy Karaoke as ‘Virtual CTO’ since 2001, helping them move from a ‘bricks and mortar’ business to one where a large part of their delivery channels are electronic in nature.
I’ve worked closely with the board in establishing technology directions and to design and produce the software and systems which have revolutionised their business.
The company and its staff do not come from a technology background, but with my help have become widely recognised as the leader in online and electronic delivery of karaoke content.
Products
- Custom Discs:
ProBurn is a system which will make custom compilation karaoke discs on demand in dealer outlets. It allows selection from over 30,000 tracks from both Easy karaoke and other major content providers and has delivered millions of tracks. It can produce both CD+G and DVD discs and is in use across the world.
- Online delivery:
We also deliver content online, either as custom compilation discs which Easy Karaoke makes and dispatches or which can be downloaded in a variety of formats.
- Dedicated Players
In addition to ‘standard’ formats (such as MP4 and WMV), Easy Karaoke have also produced custom media players which specifically support karaoke type content. Content can be delivered from our web site to supplement the built in tracks.
- On Demand Production
The technologies we’ve built as customer facing have also been adopted in house to allow on-demand generation of standard discs, reducing the need for a large stock.
Technology
The Easy Karaoke products have been built with Microsoft technologies. We've used DirectShow and Windows Media technologies extensively to encode, compress and protect our content (this is one of the things that led to me becoming an MVP in DirectShow and Media Foundation from 2002 - 2007).
We have a variety of web based (using asp and asp.net) and client based (using Windows Forms, VB6 and Windows Presentation Framework) products, making extensive use of SQL Server and Access.