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Is this akin to karaoke? (The word never appears on the page.) > Apple today announced Apple Music Sing, an exciting new feature that allows users to sing alon
by joegahona 4y ago
Is this akin to karaoke? (The word never appears on the page.)
> Apple today announced Apple Music Sing, an exciting new feature that allows users to sing along to their favorite songs with adjustable vocals1 and real-time lyrics.
Users can already "sing along to their favorite songs" -- this feels like a wasted opportunity in the first sentence to explain the differentiator. It feels like they're misusing/misunderstanding what "sing along" means, and the real feature enhancement here is that users now have the ability to suppress vocals in songs. (Which is kinda cool.)
I get that this is a press release, but "show don't tell" would go a long way in announcements like this, even (especially?) if it's not available yet.
- hamburglar 4y agoI agree with “show don’t tell” as a general rule for effectiveness in cases like this, but I find it really hard to believe anyone is going to read this and not immediately grasp what is meant by “with adjustable vocals and real-time lyrics”. Obviously you can already sing along, and the question about how this makes it better is answered within the same sentence.
- yunohn 4y agoWhat’s the reasoning behind leaving out the word “karaoke”?
- wingerlang 4y agoWhen I hear karaoke I think 90s looking machine with a tethered microphone, or equally old music videos with ugly subtitles. True or not, it is possible they just want to have full control of the image of their service. Another thing is that when you sing a foreign song, the karaoke also means to read the foreign subtitles in your own language. It's an extra meaning they might want to avoid, I assume this is not a feature they have.
- WXLCKNO 4y ago
- WXLCKNO 4y agoWow I was making shit up but the real invention is actually quite close. "The world's first karaoke machine, the Juke-8, was built by Japanese inventor and musician Daisuke Inoue in 1971. But it is Filipino inventor Roberto del Rosario who holds the machine's patent. He developed the Karaoke Sing-Along System in 1975."
- dagmx 4y agoWikipedia says the patent for karaoke machine is held by a man in the Philippines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_del_Rosario?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_del_Rosario?wprov=sfti... It also says that Karaoke in Japan is predated by sing-a-long programs in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaoke?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaoke?wprov=sfti1 Besides that I assume any patent from the 70s is now expired.
- dagmx 4y agoPerhaps it implies use in a commercial karaoke bar setting which often are dubious for licensing music. It also might imply perfect vocal removal, which they aren’t guaranteeing.
- factsarelolz 4y agoProbably because Apple doesn't want it advertising to look like: "Hey we just added a cultural pastime as a feature!" There are some that could twist this feature into "Apple profiting off of cultural appropriation".
- rhplus 4y agoAt a guess: 1) Perhaps they don’t want to trigger a different licensing model (on either the music or the lyrics) that applies specifically to karaoke devices and venues. Just a guess, not a music lawyer, but all sorts of unexpected terms apply to music licensing (such as streaming TV services not being able to use music from the original TV broadcast) 2) Perhaps they don’t want to associate with the karaoke “brand” which some users might perceive as kitschy or low-quality (have you ever seen a karaoke video?)
- hamburglar 4y agoI suspect the second is exactly right. Apple is extremely careful about how their products are perceived as elite and cool and it’s easy to imagine their marketing department thinking the word “karaoke” just evokes an uncool or unsophisticated vibe.
- yunwal 4y agoYou might be right, but I gotta say that deliberately avoiding the word karaoke feels incredibly insecure and uncool to me if that is the reason.
- rsynnott 4y agoPotentially trademark issues?
- unethical_ban 4y agoObvious. Make this look like a more original feature. Redefine the concept on Apple's terms. Have people pay attention to the novelty of it being done automatically, rather than manually in a catalog with lyrics that look like they belong on a CRT screen.
- thakoppno 4y agoLicense agreements often forbid things similar to “adjustable vocals.” It would be interesting to learn if this is achieved with technology, like automatic stemming, or through partnership agreements that provide vocal tracks separately for adjustment.
- BlueTemplar 4y agoWouldn't a programmed solution fall afoul of that licensing ?
- joegahona 4y agoI don't know, @hamburglar -- judging by just the comments in this thread, it wasn't so obvious to others. And "real-time lyrics" is _already_ in Apple Music. In your/Apple's defense, the photo they included is pretty clear what's going on. Important to note the footnote on the page -- this isn't even full-fledged karaoke: "The vocal slider adjusts vocal volume, but does not fully remove vocals." I'm being nitpicky for sure, but that's kind of what HN and similar forums are for. Especially when it's Apple, which I hold to a pretty high standard for product marketing.
- JohnBooty 4y agoAnd "real-time lyrics" is _already_ in Apple Music. Currently, Apple Music lyrics are synced to the current line of lyrics (if the lyrics metadata supports it) This new feature appears to sync the lyrics to the current word of lyrics, which is what karaoke usually does. Not sure how big a deal that is to folks looking to do their own vocals. I'm curious about how they're doing that word-for-word timing. Hardcoded metadata? ML? Is it a simple interpolation based on the existing line-by-line timing?
- hunter2_ 4y agoThe metadata exists in special karaoke recordings, but assuming they're using original recordings not created/modified for karaoke, they'd have to create it on the fly: I'd guess it's done using the same speech-to-text system used by voice assistants, which can certainly show the words it hears in near-realtime -- and way more quickly when it already knows what words it's listening for. By the way, karaoke often highlights individual syllables, not just whole words.
- layer8 4y agoNormally it’s important for karaoke that the singer’s voice is amplified to (above) the volume level of the song, and from the description they don’t seem to provide that.
- sixothree 4y agoI had a hard time understanding what they are offering as well and came here to find out. Is this for people in the same room? If so, maybe some vague reference to karaoke is merited. Is it for sharing with other people over the internet? edit: ultimately I could care less (but not by much) about using it; I am just curious about what they offer and how they compete.
- racl101 4y agoYeah, even if executed well, who is this for? I know the last thing I want is for some random person to sing the song we're all listening to given that most people can't sing. I find myself usually telling the kids in the car to pipe down and let the artist sing. So I'm really interested in understanding the demo for this feature.
- reaperducer 4y agoI find myself usually telling the kids in the car to pipe down and let the artist sing. It seems that your kids are the intended target. Kids love to sing along with music. You've already discovered that. You must not have 10 to 12-year-old girls. Put a couple of them in a room, and eventually they'll start singing.
- yamtaddle 4y agoYeah, the huge number of "sing-along versions" of movies on Disney+ make it pretty clear what at least one major target market for this is. See also: the overwhelming majority of home-karaoke devices that are purchased. Most of the market's shitty overpriced devices that barely work, aimed at kids. This replaces those with something way the hell better, on a device that also does a bunch of other stuff.
- dumpsterdiver 4y agoThe fact that you're aware that most people can't sing well is evidence that lack of singing ability in no way deters people from singing along to their favorite songs. You've kind of answered your own question: "most people" are probably the target demographic.
- jrochkind1 4y agoI came here with that question, why don't they call this karaoke? Wondered if "karaoke" is trademarked? (or patented?!) It doesn't seem to me likely that they didn't think their audience would know the word "karaoke" at this point, but I don't know.
- rodiger 4y agoTotal speculation, but maybe Apple focus grouped it and saw karaoke has some corny/cringy implicit associations so they wanted some distance
- racl101 4y agoCause Karaoke has cheesy or corny perception. Have you ever seen those cringe looking karaoke CD compilations of famous songs. They always look cheap. And if Apple knows anything is how to market / rebrand the same old shit and sell it to the masses at really marked up prices for profit.
- Y-bar 4y agoEven to an introvert like me, the cheesiness and being corny is part of what makes karaoke so good, it has an automatic atmosphere where you are allowed to do badly because we can all laugh at ourselves. Polish and perfection makes this less appealing to me. Makes it feel up-tight and a bit snobby.
- gfxgirl 4y agofor me, I can't sing along if it's not close to the original because my brain remembers every tick of the original and wants to match the key of the original as well. Also, I had a friend who got addicted to Smule which is an online sing duets with random strangers. It uses auto-tune so that anyone can enjoy themselves. I never tried it but he said it was amazing and he got a ton of joy from it. Me, I like the idea that I can show off my amazing singing skills so if this auto-tunes everyone then that will go away. On the other hand, it's always been frustrating that box style karaoke places rarely have a large selection of western music (most of them are targeting the subset of their local market that would actually to got a box style karaoke place). My hope is that with this more of them will support just using the room as a place to use this service and then my friends and I can sing from a larger variety of songs.
- planede 4y agoKaraoke usually implies no or suppressed vocal channel in the audio mix, doesn't it? It's "sing along" as it's still the original mix, I suppose. edit: I missed the "adjustable vocals" in the list of features. No idea then. Footnote says "The vocal slider adjusts vocal volume, but does not fully remove vocals."
- manmal 4y agoThis is not only about vocals suppression, but also about visualizing timing (displaying when each syllable should be sung). Many songs have weirdly timed bridges where it's not clear when singing will resume. And some people are just not good at timing - having a visual timing clue will help there.
- l0c0b0x 4y agoThat's funny... within 5 seconds I searched for "Karaoke" and it is suspiciously not mentioned in the page.
- hunter2_ 4y agoKaraoke is where some other artist performs and records the song, without vocals, in the style of whoever popularized the song. This Apple feature seems to be where the same popular recording gets used, which has vocals, and then some magic processing reduces the vocals. There has always been software to sorta-kinda suppress vocals from existing recordings, but it usually ends up sounding like trash (artifacts of all sorts) compared to just having a karaoke band re-perform the song (although the talent and production quality can be dubious with the latter). Presumably the innovation here is not having vocal suppression sound so bad. Aside: and then there are popular artists who release an instrumental version, or stems from which an instrumental version can be trivially created, but this is so extremely rare as to not even be on-topic for a conversation about broad availability.
- kevincox 4y agoIs it? I've never taken karaoke to mean covers. Often it is the original soundtrack with the vocals suppressed (sometimes well via remastering and sometimes poorly with an equalizer). To me karaoke is just signing to music, which is exactly what this is. I found it very strange that they avoided that word.
- CharlesW 4y ago> Often it is the original soundtrack with the vocals suppressed (sometimes well via remastering and sometimes poorly with an equalizer). Properly licensed karaoke tracks are covers, because licensing custom remixes of original tracks is prohibitive. There are sites where you can buy stems/backing tracks of any song you can think of, which are reproductions by talented musicians. https://www.karaoke-version.com/custombackingtrack/wham/last-christmas.html https://www.karaoke-version.com/custombackingtrack/wham/last...
- simondw 4y agoThat feels like an accidental, not essential, property of karaoke. I doubt anyone who enjoys karaoke would reject a track recorded by the original artist because it wasn't a cover by someone they'd never heard of.
- smeej 4y agoCan you link your iPhone to your Apple TV to amplify your own voice over your TV's sound system? Then it would seem even more like "Apple Karaoke."
- yannikyeo 4y agoIts not "yet" Karaoke. Missing one "key" feature, with karaoke machine one can adjust the key of the song up or down to be able to sing along. Apple Music Sing appears to only adjust the vocal volume up or down.
- dehrmann 4y agoMy guess is it's not licensed for public performance, so they don't want to give anyone any ideas.
- misterprime 4y agoThe at-home karaoke experience is pretty horrible. Companies put a high price tag on access to limited catalogs with hit and miss quality. Oftentimes, the musical bed is low quality midi music and the lyrics may or may not be timed properly. I'm thrilled to see this announcement and will likely buy my first Apple TV because of it and switch my Pandora subscription to Apple Music.
- whywhywhywhy 4y ago> The at-home karaoke experience is pretty horrible As long as you have a 0 latency Mic setup then just that and YouTube searching Karaoke versions with AdBlocker works beautifully.
- mikestew 4y agoAs an exercise for the reader: see if you can count the barriers-to-entry for the average person in this suggestion, and then contrast and compare to Apple's offering.
- smoldesu 4y agoSpeaking as someone who doesn't have an Apple Music subscription, I think I'll take my chances with YouTube.
- ErikVandeWater 4y agoCounting ad-blocking as a barrier to entry on HN is probably unfair.
- mikestew 4y agoAbsolutely, which is why I specified “average person”. I think most anyone on HN could figure it out. But that’s not what Apple is shooting for, I don’t think. At the end of the day, I just didn’t want come right out and say “rsync, ftp, something something Dropbox”. :-)
- insane_dreamer 4y agoYes, it is; not clear why they didn't just say that.
- danjc 4y agoMaybe the word “karaoke” sounds too old school for the target demographic.
- anigbrowl 4y agoYes, it's karaoke, but Apple can't brand that as its own. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-made-this https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-made-this While I have zero interest in karaoke, I imagine it's devastating for a bunch of karaoke apps that are now going to see new sales evaporate. I don't think it's cool for the company to just take over a market, or a smart thing to do when their app store monopoly is a political football. I guess they're relying on antitrust enforcement being more of an idea than a practical reality these days.
- rodgerd 4y agoPossibly they don't want to clash with people who sell actual karaoke games, either on Apple devices or elsewhere.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]