Good karaoke software?

September 2, 2017 1:05 PM

I'm having a party tonight and would like to do karaoke. We have a dj with a full sound system, laptops, and a slow internet connection, so I thought it'd be fun if I could just download something for karaoke.

There's a ton of different karaoke programs out there, and I'm having trouble figuring out which ones are good. We have both a PC and a Mac. Is there a karaoke program that someone out there would recommend? Do we have to buy the songs?

posted by heathkit to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Best answer: I was searching for one and I liked KaraFun the best. It's not free but you can just do a 2 day pass for pretty cheap ($6. A month is $10). While you do need an Internet connection, you can download a bunch of songs ahead of time.

It does have vocal tracks but they're not original. The music quality and selection seems good. It's a bit fiddly to use at first but easy to get the hang of.
posted by darksong at 1:24 PM on September 2, 2017

I had this exact desire last weekend and stumbled upon a not-perfect-but-servicable solution: if you have a game console and a USB mic, pick up a used Rock Band or Band Hero disc from GameStop for a few bucks. Pop it into your machine, go into to "practice" (no fail) mode, and turn the vocals off in the settings menu. Bit of a limited song selection (unless you go online ahead of time and download DLC songs), but it works in a pinch and we had a great time.
posted by ®@ at 4:00 PM on September 2, 2017 [2 favorites]

That said, since you already have a DJ, the additional audio / video hassle of a console may not be worth the trouble (and may be insulting to the DJ in question).
posted by ®@ at 4:02 PM on September 2, 2017

I use a USB mic and then use youtube on a TV for this. Youtube has everything. Not sure how slow your internet is though.
posted by k8t at 9:08 PM on September 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Might be too late but if not, Lucky Voice is excellent. Subscription-based so you have to remember to cancel after the party, but there's a ton of songs (I think around 9000), it does all the trad karaoke stuff like letting you queue up songs and so on, and it looks as if since I last used it - when it was already excellent - they've added the ability for people to queue stuff up from their phones etc which seems handy. I have also used Singstar and Karafun for this and liked Lucky Voice most.
posted by severalbees at 12:27 AM on September 3, 2017