Karaoke Forums

I have a question for all the wise KJs out there.

We were recently offered a job hosting a weekly, month-long Karaoke contest culminating in a "Karaoke Idol" winner. This gig is at a nice hotel lounge with a great in-house sound system.

We have never hosted a contest before, and we want it to be as fair as possible (don't want to get shot and all).

What are your suggestions and advice to make this as fair and smooth as possible?

Thank you in advance for your help!

There was a lot of good advice in this thread a few weeks ago:

http://www.karaoke-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=16237

OK a couple things. First off, I hate Karaoke contests, I think they're bad for Karaoke overall so if you can get out of doing it, do that. Now assuming that not doing the contest is not a possibility, here are my thoughts.

First, there are a lot of ways to do it that are fair however, perception is more important that actuality in this case and there's no way to do a contest that will be perceived as fair by everyone. No matter what you do, someone will claim there is bias, unfairness, or whatever. So to help that along, what I would try to do is focus on the being a contest for fun rather than really focusing hard on it being a competition.

The best way I've seen for making it fair is to have two hats in which people can put their name (only one entry per person). Names drawn from one hat (or bucket or whatever) are those that will sing in the contest. Limit it to a specific number ahead of time and that's how many names you pick. The second is for the judges who will pick the winners. Again have a specific number of judges that you'll use selected ahead of time (keep it around 5). Give each of the judges score cards with specific criteria for how to rate each singer and have them rate it on a scale (1-10 or whatever). This makes it more objective now that it becomes simple mathematics. For each singer, throw out the high and low scores from the judges and average the rest to get that singer's score. Now you've significantly limited the chances that a singer could have a friend on the judging panel that weights it toward them.

Back to that perception thing, you will not make everyone happy. People will always think (and their friends will tell them this too) that they sang better than the winner. There will always be claims of bias. So some people will leave unhappy each and every time you do a contest. This is why I don't like them, I want everyone to leave the show happy. But anyway, so to limit the hurt feelings, make sure you're very clear before the contest starts on how exactly it will work. Describe everything you're doing, how many singers, the judging system in complete detail, etc. That will help reduce the claims of unfairness that inevitably result from every Karaoke contest.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

Thanks for the link Barry and the advice Tony. I think I have some good ideas to start with!

The "safest" method of judging karaoke contests is to judge where no one knows you.

And that sounds like your situation, right Michaelangelo?

Personally I would not do a contest in my home room and involve my regular singers.

Based on the feedback, we are thinking of doing some sort of "voting" system, where a hat is passed around after each qualifying round, one entry per patron, and the votes tallied by an impartial party.

We thought we might have the qualifying the first couple hours of the show, and regular singing the second half of each date.

OK well let me point out why that will anger people. Now you've just made it that the person who brings the most friends with them that night will win. Good for the bar (getting people to bring lots of friends along) for that night, but will hurt business in the long run.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

I agree that contests are bad for business in the long run. It will pack the place for contest nights and kill the rest and your regulars will find someplace else to sing.

I have seen karaoke contests won for reasons of political correctness, tight skirts, tone-deafness of the judges, and who brought the most friends, but never for the best performance.

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Okay, who took my pants?

I wouldn't risk doing anything like that at any of my shows for sure - no sense in alienating the 'bread and butter' singers who come in week after week. I think if you're doing it at a place that has never had karaoke you might be okay - nobody to offend, but it sure doesn't create a lasting loyalty in anyone...not even the winner.

In hindsight, letitrip's first piece of advice is the best in my experience.

I was asked to do this once, before I actually got into doing karaoke. I was in the house band at a nearby music pub. I thought yeah, this should be fun. WRONG!!!

We did a voting system, so nobody knew who voted for who, but at the end of the show, there was a girl who had brought all her family & friends and they were all in our faces going nuts because she didn't win.
Thankfully, there was no violence, but it got very close. They were all hanging around outside the pub for ages after they walked out. I quietly stepped through the side door and tippy toe'd it to my car.

Never again!

The only system I have ever used since is to put a stamp on the slips and put them in a bucket. Only those slips handed to me until 10pm went into the bucket. This encouraged people to arrive earlier. Not sure if that will work in today's recession, but it worked just great at the time. At the end of the night, usually about half an hour before closing, we simply picked a random slip out of the hat and that person won £50. Of couse, they'd go & buy all their mates a drink so the pub owners are happier still.
The singers were happy because all they needed to do was sing so everybody had a chance and the pub was happy because it got the punters in early and kept them there.

What 6 String mentions here is something I have done that I would recommend. Have a drawing for a prize. You get one entry in the drawing for each song that you sing. This is a great way to get people up and singing, especially the fence riders (those that look at the book all night but never sign up) and it's totally fair because it's just the luck of the draw.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

I think letitrip has a great idea. Contests really do nothing for the singers, and someone always will think it's rigged. BTW letitrip, I'm in Muskego and hope to make one of your shows.

Safest, Fairest? Don't have one.

A "fair karaoke contest" is an oxymoron.

My boyfriend's son was in one this year that tried to use strict, non-subjective criteria for the juding--sort of like the computer games would do it. So he got points off for singing the correct words to his song instead of the incorrect ones that appeared on the screen. One of the criteria was how well you followed the screen......Nothing but bad feelings all around.