SingShot, an online karaoke site launched early this morning, attempts to bring the excitement of the karaoke bar into the home. Now you can be embarrassed in front of the whole world, from the comfort of your own desk. The big idea is to fuse the excitement around user-content TV shows such as American Idol with a new flash-based online recording tool that makes it easy for anyone with a mic and some desktop speakers to distribute their rendition. It might not be as cool as mashing up your DJ friend's latest mix with a presidential speech and video footage of your last zipcording excursion, but karaoke can still be fun, if you're the type, as a growing number of people are.
The main player in online karaoke-land, KSolo, charges $8 per month (free 3-song trial) and requires you to download a Windows-only client program. SingShot, on the other hand, costs $5 per month (free 2-week trial), and lets you use just about any browser - no download required. The big advantage with SingShot is that you can record Happy Birthday (yes, they have the licensing) or any of the 2500 karaoke hits on the site after setting up a free trial in a matter of seconds, and then email yourself singing it to whomever you want (or embed it on your MySpace page).
SingShot is incredibly easy to use, considering how much goes on behind the scenes to make it work. However, the convenience of recording via Flash over the Internet has one potential drawback. The complicated latency issues involved can mess with the timing of your recordings, as I found out when I tried to record Funkytown on my iBook.
When I sang it to SingShot using my pre-Intel Mac iBook, there was quite a bit of latency, to the point that it sounded like I was alternating verses with what was supposed to be my back up vocals track. With the PC, the problem was alleviated. Here are both results:
My embarrassing "Funkytown" (demonstrating latency using iBook)
My embarrassing "Burning Down the House" (almost no latency using PC desktop)
(image from japanesecentral, Yoko Katagiri and NihongoWeb)
