Hi David We are very aware of your article in relation to the Beach House in Surfers and have found comments made disturbing. Could you please advise who is your roving reporter and what experience they may have in reporting venues, unless it is yourself that travels all over For all intensive purposes our Company who is the provider of karaoke at this venue (as you no doubt are aware) have not received any complaints from, management, patrons or singers alike since we have been conducting karaoke at this venue Maybe in the overall scheme of things there are many many operators in the industry, some alot better than others. There are some comperes who have cult followings, there are some operators who have different styles and some operators who are down right boring. The compere at the Beach House is obviously well liked at this venue hence his longevity in the venue There are always favourites in the industry and some people would think "be more like them"...but then there are quite a few company's that avoid 'being like them'...It is quite insulting for you to make a comment for a venue to 'go down the road' to see a different style of karaoke and also how their business should be run.............what suits one venue certainly doesn't suit another venue Our association with the Beach Hotel and its management has been more than positive and the management of the Hotel have supported karaoke from the outset and have been very professional in their dealings with us In your last newsletter where you indicated that the 'employer' of the operator was infact the very same person who introduced Karaoke into Australia..........maybe if you really did (or your roving reporter did) find this particular night of karaoke less than average it is perhaps more professional to either speak to us directly prior to any comments of this insulting nature to be sent around the world (This company) has been the initiator of Karaoke Shows in Clubs and Hotel for the past 15 years and without (our) introduction of karaoke in to Australia, there would not be the karaoke there is today. Major karaoke competitions that are recognised throughout Australia & New Zealand have been an enormous success and offered the opportunity to Venues, Management, patrons, singers and of course the employment career of many many karaoke comperes..So something must be right as Karaoke is still well and truly entrenched in Australia in a positive and successful light Your website "where2sing" very much in the early days benefited enormously with respect to the collation of karaoke information etc etc and this was provided to you willingly in the good name of karaoke and getting this info out into the karaoke world plus it afforded you the opportunity to see your website expand to where it is today The entertainment industry is a very pro-active industry and should not be viewed in the unprofessional manner that it has been put forward in this particular article Regards

REPLY from David
Great to see that you're up early on Sunday, and have already read your Karaoke News Email... Unless the reviewer of a feature story is named, it is I who has reviewed the venue. I also would imagine that it would be hard to mistake either the length of the review, or the writing style. I'm interested that you mention that karaoke has been at the Beach House for a long time, because it wasn't listed on W2S, nor was one of the venues mentioned by you when I last asked you specifically which venues you now ran. Therefore I was somewhat surprised when I went there to find it was one of your venues, but somewhat less surprised after watching the host spend his time with his back to the few people there. Whilst I love a good whinge myself, and certainly would feel on the 'back foot' if I were the company supplying this kararoke host, I think you may find a more appropriate business response to a negative review - which is, after all, a valuable insight into why this venue attracted so few customers on the night compared with its local competitor - is to address the points raised in the review. I'm delighted that you recognise the benefit to the karaoke industry of where2sing.com, but I wonder how much the interests of sngers, hosts and operators might be served by a website that can report only positives - especially where there is so much substandard within the (any) industry and which holds it back - or by a website that were afraid to report the truth in its reviews? Yes, it might further the interests of established karaoke companies, but would certainly be detrimental to publicising and encouraging the new breed of enthusiast-operators who appear to be raising the karaoke experience for singers to a new level and thus offering stiff competition to the established names.
Submitted by on 22-04-2006

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