For anyone that has ever lived in or around a Chinese community, they know how much they love Karaoke. Large parties will get together and sing in restaurants and bars, at home or in Karaoke Television Hotels (KTVs) where clients can rent out whole rooms for their parties to sing in.
Now a few Chinese websites have brought the phenomenon online, and their popularity is soaring. According to a story in the Beijing Morning Post, a new Chinese Karaoke site called 51mike.com has reached 2 million users so far. The site lets users stream music with or without lyrics, sing along, and even upload their own homemade music videos for voting. “51″ sounds like “I want” in Chinese, so the site is a pun for “I want the mike!”
The temptation to embarrass yourself online for a little limelight is just as
prevalent in the Chinese Youth Culture as everywhere else. Two young students at the Guangzhou Arts Institute, affectionately called the BackDorm Boys, gained fame by lip syncing songs by the Backstreet Boys on YouTube. They’ve since been seen on the Ellen DeGeneres Show and as spokespeople for Motorola. Look carefully, and there is even a nod to them in the pilot episode of the show “Heroes”.
51mike is not available in English…yet. But similar American companies have been snatched up this year by large corporations like Yahoo (Bix), NewsCorp (kSolo), and EA (SingShot). PS2 developed a Karaoke game called Karaoke Revolution Party after the huge success of Guitar Hero. Even the Wii console is getting mic’d up with a new game called Boogie due to be released at the end of the year.
From viral videos to websites and Wii games, Karaoke is primed for mass-consumption in the U.S. We’re glad that caught on rather than furniture humping and baby kicking (though we could see potential with the remix).
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