Hacker News Reader

Comment by joegahona | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

The 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.

> 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.

As 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.

Speaking as someone who doesn't have an Apple Music subscription, I think I'll take my chances with YouTube.

Counting ad-blocking as a barrier to entry on HN is probably unfair.

Absolutely, 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”. :-)

If the average person can pay for Apple Music they could pay for Youtube Premium.

I don't think the cost is the barrier they're discussing here.

The point is that ad block is not among the barriers you need to overcome.

I mean I'm the one suggesting it and it's still a pain for me to set up after a few drinks, used to have the Microphones going into the computer and then that being the whole output but we literally just plug mics direct from receiver to speakers because a MacOS update introduced latency.

This is what my wife and I do, it’s pretty flawless. YouTube + Mic & mixer to a separate speaker. It’s the only way, and YouTube has the best karaoke.

Routing the mic through your AV setup _will_ result in a delay which’ll make for a horrible experience. So don’t bother. Get a cheap mixer and a decentish Shure mic, a single active studio monitor and you’re away.

On YouTube are you getting the original recordings with the vocals removed? Or it doesn’t matter to you?

Just search for any song and append “ karaoke” and you’ll find a plethora of renditions ready to sing. Some are better than others so YMMV.

Most "karaoke versions" of songs are by cover bands.

This is exactly what I did for the wife and kid. Works beautifully, unlimited catalog.

You don't need an ad blocker if you just pay for YouTube premium. Often times I see people complaining about ads there, but I think ads are necessary for users who aren't paying for the product.

I did that before. Just frustrated by missing Karaoke versions of many songs

any specific recommendations for a setup?

JBL partybox and any wired microphone.

Wireless mics work fine too, just need to make sure its going through as few devices as possible. So I plug the Mic receiver box straight into two speakers, one for each mic.

> The at-home karaoke experience is pretty horrible

A smart tv, a microphone and a speaker? Or get a karaoke microphone with a built in speaker.

I 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.

Cause 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.

Even 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.

for 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.

> 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.

I don't know if this helps at all, but you probably want to learn to sing in a different octave, not a different key. This means shifting your voice up and down from the original in multiples of eight notes. You can sing in a different octave without changing the background music and it'll sound completely normal, and have the same feel as the original song.

> 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.

They're also pretty good at taking a product that is about 75% of the way to being great, and pushing it that last bit. Hell, that's arguably why they are so successful. They're not really inventors, they are perfectors.

Interestingly they don't even use the word カラオケ even in the Japanese press release, even though karaoke is massively popular in Japan.

https://www.apple.com/jp/newsroom/2022/12/apple-introduces-a...

It's probably if they use the word カラオケ, that might cause inherent expectation of what services would feature, like mic echo, scoring, ranking, etc., that's most of major karaoke apps, even on mobile platform would feature.

They're adding it to Apple Music for no extra cost this time though.

Apple literally owns a show called Carpool Karaoke

what do you expect from a company that invented the pencil?

Disagree. The reason is that they would get laughed out of court if they tried to trademark karaoke, whereas now they own one of the most common words in the English language. If you had or were planning to make an app called 'Sing along' or 'Sing with me' or suchlike, get ready for a scary legal letter from Apple's trademark lawyers.

IANAL but Karaoke has been trademarked in different decades in different countries. Most of those trademarks are considered "Abandoned" according to the few databases I skimmed in a brief search, but that covered only a couple of countries.

I think most US courts would see "karaoke" as a generic word today, but I don't know about courts outside of the US, and Karaoke is still seen as a part of the "trade dress" of a couple specific US corporations even if they can't entirely protect that trademark, they are still allowed to fight for it. At least a couple seem to still exist primarily as trolls for lawsuits today.

According to the toy aisle of US stores, "Sing" (and "Sing Along") is the only real generic English term in use, and very few (no?) current toys use the word "Karaoke", so I'm guessing those trolls are still winning in the US, for now. (Again, I don't know about the rest of the world, and toy branding is an anecdotal source at best, but still an interesting proxy view in how much large companies assume they will be sued.)

I spent a couple years on the YouTube Music team, adjacent to the folks who handled the nightmare that is music rights and licensing.

It was explained to me that the reason YouTube didn't offer a karaoke feature -- despite having licenses to a lot of lyrics -- is that karaoke is considered a separate license.

Even if you license both the recording and the lyrics, combining them into a karaoke feature isn't on the table by default.

I personally have no idea how accurate that is, but this was the scoop I got from those in a position of authority.

If it is indeed true, then perhaps that is a factor in Apple's decision not to use that word.

This sort of ultra-divided and litigious licensing rights regime that I suspect is why music hasn't yet had a GPT-3/DALLe style machine learning breakthrough that has captured the public's imagination.

Given the monumental size of fastidiously annotated music corpuses available, the quite diligent and far more agreed upon systematisation of various forms of scientific description of musical forms, and the arguably simpler space than some of the more recent advances like 3d object generation and the sophisticated artistic output from the latest 2d image generating models... seems rather odd music has no wildly popular machine learning model, something i could ask "give me 5 minutes of synth-wave by Mozart" or "Prodigy's Firestarter, but without the lyrics"...

... My suspicion is that the entire endeavour is tortured by licensing and at every turn must avoid ever sounding like music that could be owned by someone else, and as a consequence cannot be "popular" as it must be crippled and limited, built to at all costs avoid ever sounding like Taylor Swift, Queen, Aerosmith, et al.

It's "simply" an "AI" EQ preset adjuster using the existing licensing/sale/broadcast rights. /s

For prior art, see what happened to Aereo. A little-known fact is that YouTube TV started with the exact same strategy. But Google, of course, had more money and lawyers to get over the hump.

> …why don't they call this karaoke?

One notable difference is that with Apple Music Sing you're singing to the original track instead of an instrumental reproduction.

> Adjustable vocals: Users now have control over a song’s vocal levels. They can sing with the original artist vocals, take the lead, or mix it up on millions of songs in the Apple Music catalog.

Everyone I know would call that karaoke. And I assume will when telling their friends about this new feature.

If I search for Apple Sing on google news, the first 5 articles all call it "karaoke-like" or just "a karaoke feature".

Whatever reason they have for not saying the word karaoke, I don't think it's that it's not what most people consider karaoke.

When I think karaoke, I think microphone. It appears this makes no use of a microphone or captures the singer's vocals in any way, it just isolates the instrumental tracks and eliminates or reduces the vocal track.

A microphone (and ideally having your own vocals mixed with the audio output) is the core feature of karaoke, not playing an instrumental version of the song.

And yet most media coverage I can find of the Apple Music Sing release uses the word karaoke to describe it, thinking that will be clear to their readers. I would feel safe saying your opinion is a minority one.

But this has become a pretty silly "debate".

Me, I'm still curious why Apple did not use the word karaoke, and do not myself think it's becuase they don't think people will consider it karaoke, but I understand you do, cool.

The whole point is that you can sing with it, which implies it can capture your voice in some way, even if you aren't holding a microphone.

Singing with something doesn't imply anything about capture. It's just saying that I can sing along to songs without the original vocal while I'm washing the dishes in the kitchen or whatever.

Which will be your phone in version 2, with a little software magic to retune discordant voices prior to the reverb.

Some "karaoke versions" of songs you can find are literally the same recording with the audio unmixed. Carefully listening can pick up some of the vocals from the other microphones.

Total speculation, but maybe Apple focus grouped it and saw karaoke has some corny/cringy implicit associations so they wanted some distance

Doesn't appear to be karaoke because I'm assuming it doesn't take your voice and throw it into the mix.

Probably because they're trying to push the "Apple Music Sing" branding, even though everyone will call it karaoke anyways.

Sing Different.

It's what the marketing machine at Apple does.

Karaoke 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.

> Karaoke is where some other artist performs and records the song, without vocals, in the style of whoever popularized the song.

No, this just isn't what the word means, either popularly or in technical usage. I can't find any dictionary that restricts karaoke to covers, and if anything the dictionary emphasizes non-covers:

> an act of singing along to a music video, especially one from which the original vocals have been electronically eliminated.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/karaoke?r=75&src=ref&ch=di...

It's true that in practice most karaoke audio tracks are covers for financial reasons, but that doesn't change what the word means. Most tables have four legs, but six-legged tables are still tables.

I'll admit that I'm coming at it from a Western perspective: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaoke#Production_methods

I agree that it's not what the word inherently means, but it's the typical situation (which is effectively like meaning) where I am (USA).

I'm also coming at it from a Western perspective, and I agree that in the US karaoke audio tracks are usually covers. But the typical situation is not effectively like meaning. Tables are typically not made of gold, because that's so expensive, but if you show someone a solid-gold table they will not be unsure whether it's a table. The defining features of tables have to do with form and function, not the chemical composition. (In fact, if we can even go to the extreme of considering a hypothetical single-piece diamond table, which presumably has never existed. If one were created, everyone would instantly recognize it as a table.)

See the many examples (in the West) of tools that remove vocals from audio tracks; they are ubiquitously described as useful for creating karaoke audio tracks:

https://vocalremover.org/

https://tunebat.com/Vocal-Remover

https://www.conversion-tool.com/karaoke/

https://www.songpeel.com/song-to-karaoke

Is 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.

> To me karaoke is just signing to music, which is exactly what this is. I found it very strange that they avoided that word.

Apple's footnote disclaimer says "does not fully remove vocals" and "kara" means "empty/void" so it kind of makes sense to avoid using such an absolute term to describe something that isn't.

> 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...

That 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.

> That feels like an accidental, not essential, property of karaoke.

Regardless of whether you believe it's an "essential property", that karaoke music often sounds cheesy is one of several reasons Apple wouldn't want Apple Music Sing to be associated with it.

There are tons of cases where you'll hear covers instead of a licensed original, because paying Harry Fox (ie, just the songwriter) is cheaper.

The fact that most karaoke audio tracks are performed as covers for financial reasons does not change how the word karaoke is used in actual language.

That's not an essential component of Karaoke though. I live in Japan where Karaoke is extremely popular, and in the more higher-end karaoke systems, you can pick the original music for popular songs (or sometimes you can even pick live performances with the video of the artist on stage and everything)

Fair enough, but the use of original source material is still the exception by a wide margin.

> Karaoke is where some other artist performs and records the song, without vocals, in the style of whoever popularized the song.

that's more the definition of "cover" than "karaoke" (which is a live sing-along at a bar or at home)

I see where you're going, but I disagree that "without vocals" would exist anywhere in the definition of "cover." It's all a simple Venn diagram, though. There are covers, and there are karaoke versions, and Western karaoke is usually the intersection.

Sound separation is incredible lately, even the free options. I'm sure Apples tested their model against songs likely to be sung. I'm sure it sounds great.

The real surprise is that the artists are ok with this, they must be getting compensated.

This not remotely true. There are plenty of karaoke songs that are the original recording from the original artist. At least in Japan, where the word "karaoke" originates

Touché. I was looking at it through a Western lens, as I imagine this Apple press release also is, in avoiding the term. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaoke#Production_methods

I 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.

Karaoke is the best activity I do with my parents in-law when I visit. They love it. It's kind of fun, actually. The equipment they have is old and they have special CDs with the songs and lyrics, really low quality. Apple Sing through AppleTV, with voice search, would be a huge improvement.

Yeah, 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.

The 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.

I 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.

Yeah, 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.

You could care a little bit less but not a lot less? Inevitably (doing the math) that means you must really care a lot right?

This 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.

I 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.

I 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.

     And "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?

The 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.

License 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.

Wouldn't a programmed solution fall afoul of that licensing ?

Normally 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.

What’s the reasoning behind leaving out the word “karaoke”?

At 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?)

I 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.

You 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.

When 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.

Perhaps 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.

Obvious. 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.

Potentially trademark issues?

Probably 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".

Karaoke 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."

My guess is it's not licensed for public performance, so they don't want to give anyone any ideas.

Can 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."

That's funny... within 5 seconds I searched for "Karaoke" and it is suspiciously not mentioned in the page.

Its 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.

Yes, it's karaoke, but Apple can't brand that as its own.

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.

Possibly they don't want to clash with people who sell actual karaoke games, either on Apple devices or elsewhere.

Maybe the word “karaoke” sounds too old school for the target demographic.

Yes, it is; not clear why they didn't just say that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com