This is literally the longest I have ever gone without updating the songbooks I use for karaoke. I printed that list in January 2016. Now it’s December, longest they have stayed the same in my 13 years running karaoke shows.
There’s a few reasons. First, I am constantly busy with karaoke, which means books get ruined fast. I’ve printed the same song list so many times, to avoid the “are all the books the same?” and “it wasn’t in the other book” complaints at shows. There’s also the fact that many online stores have decided to pay attention to the fact that karaoke tracks are not legally licensed to sell as individual downloads in America, so I’ve had to get creative in the ways I buy music, ways that still pay the folks who produce it and hopefully pay some licensing to record labels/songwriters. So, yeah, I’ve only added 80 or 90 new songs in the last 10 months.
There’s now a couple of books with these new songs out at my shows, but I’m trying something different. I’m having them printed and spiral bound. I can throw those away and not feel as guilty about it as I do when there’s mold growing inside the clear sleeves in binders, which take about an hour each to assemble. They cost a little more, but I think updating incrementally is a better way to do it. We’ll see if it works.