I read Ray's post last night while hosting usual Friday night show that will never have a competition but was full of people having a ripper of a time and mostly were decent singers and were entertaining.

In case you don't know who I am Ray, I'll give you a bit of background so you have a bit of an understanding of where I'm coming from. I started singing karaoke about 7 or 8 years ago and would have been classed as an average but enthusiastic singer but quickly became what most hosts hate; went to karaoke alone, didn't contribute much to the atmosphere of the room, only drank soft drink (despite not driving) and was always ansy about how long it was til my next song. 45 min was about the length of my patience and I would have done some serious grumbling had the rotation stretched to an hour and a half. Oh, and if you want to slot someone new in, you can slot them in after me thanks. I'd love to go back in time and slap that little shit around a bit lol... I did prefer to sing completely new songs every few weeks though, so I guess that's something.

As I got better at singing, I went in a few comps; the furthest I ever got was coming 2nd in the state final of a Sing Your Way To Indy comp. Did I want to go to Indy? Nope, but it was a comp, so I entered. This is the comp that I (in)famously donned the Frank N Furter outfit for which people around the place still pay me out about (badge of honour as far as I'm concerned!) Having been in quite a few comps, I've seen how the comp circuit works, seen the same people show up and sing the same songs. It got to a stage where I started making guesses who would win before anyone sung based on who was there and knowing what they would sing.

After a while I started judging comps, I think there was about four in total, one of the years over at the Cumberland Community Club being the biggest one (which a pre-host Mic Riphone won actually). Having been a comp chaser myself, I decided to incorporate fixes to what I felt to be a deficiency in the running of comps in general and that was comps should not reward the best singer, but the best entertainer. For example, of two equally skilled singers, the one that sings Lady Marmalade would win over the one that sings The Rose. One of the big problems of comps in general is that there is no understanding of how the judges are allocating points and therefore who is winning; partly because I think some judges don't know how they are allocating points. It's all well and good to say you are giving 20 points for singing, but what does that actually mean? What does a singer who scores 15 have to do to score an 18? I heard one judge actually say 'be better', I wanted to slap him. When I judged, I broke those categories down into micro-categories allocating points for pitch, tone, range, difficulty and heart. Most comp chasers that I judged didn't do too well on the last three micro-categories...

I started hosting about four and a half years ago, starting off just filling in occasionally but I never thought I'd be a host material, mostly because I would have want to have sung all the time and who wants to leave the rotation in the hands of someone like that! As it turns out, I love my rules way more than hearing my own voice and I hate saying no to people so my rotations are the least of my worries.

Everything Entertainment has a policy (bent on at least one occasion that I recall) of not running competitions at our venues. There are many reasons, but here's some food for thought: a great karaoke night is one where the whole room comes together and behaves as one large social group rather than several small social groups (or even single individuals). What this does is result in having everybody enjoy everybody's performances rather that it being largely restricted to that person's group of friends. As a host, you want to foster a sense of inclusion, that the venue is an emotionally safe environment (vital for new or hesitant singers) and that everyone is treated equally. Most of all, you want to build a strong positive emotional connection between the patron and the gig so that it simply wouldn't occur to the patron that they should go to another pub or another karaoke gig, they feel so comfortable and at home at your gig that it just doesn't make sense not to be there.

Karaoke comps have a tendency to do the opposite of those things. Rather than be inclusive, comps tend to be divisive; the results of a comp simply can't get away from labeling singers as better and worse than each other. If you've ever seen the 'Worst of Australian Idol' specials, you can see that people who thought they can sing better than they are scored find this very confronting. So not only have you created an 'us vs them' situation and you've heightened their sense of vulnerability but the majority of entrants won't win when they thought they should have and you've now you've created a negative emotional association between the entrant and the venue. In regular karaoke, everyone wins a prize, the applause from the crowd.

There are other reasons as well of course. My job is to make money for the pub, that is the only reason I am there. I do that by putting on a show that people want to come to, enjoy being at and feel encouraged to bring friends and generally get involved in the atmosphere (which often includes drinking). While nothing is ever applicable across the board, it's been my experience that comp chasers don't drink while at a comp, which is understandable, you want to be sober to maximise your control over your instrument. There's also no guarantee that you'll only get great singers at your comp, just as there's no guarantee that you'll only get poor to average singers at a gig not running a comp.

You asked a hypothetical question Ray, one that I will have a crack at answering...

'I put a hypothetical towards you ... say a comp is held at a venue and a good singer attends their first karaoke at that venue with the intention of perhaps making it their local. But because they win the comp and have not been a previous regular they are considered a comp chaser and therefore people including the host make them feel unwelcome. Or because of their previous non-regular status they get bias against them in the comp. Would this make them feel like coming back?'

The first problem in answering your question (apart from the fact that it is loaded) is that you make several assumptions which aren't truisms. Right off the bat I'm asking, what makes you think that I as the host would not make the winner of the comp feel welcome? You may have had bad experiences at other venues and with other hosts and that's fine to refer to those but it's hard to allege that this behaviour is repeated across the board. If you won a comp at a gig I hosted and came back the following week I'd say 'welcome back, congratulations on last week, what would you like to sing tonight?' Don't confuse bad hosting with a bias against comps.

The last thing I want to throw in there is that having great singers at your venue won't necessarily equate to a better night. I've heard thunderous applause given to average but entertaining singers and polite applause given to great singers. I think there are few crowds around that would sit through four hours of The Rose...

In my mind, if a venue/host thinks that the only way to attract great singers to the show (and really, the question should be 'how to attract people who want to let their hair down and have fun') is to hold a comp, I wonder what it is about the show that has prevented those people from going beforehand.
Submitted by LeatherBaron on 14-01-2011

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