Great news! Ozzy's solo albums are FINALLY available worldwide on Youtube. They had been blocked worldwide for as long as I can remember. What I mean by this is that only the official Ozzy Youtube channel could upload anything containing any part of his music. But at somepoint in recent weeks (I haven't checked since earlier this year), it is all finally available. For those wondering why I never had any Ozzy Karaoke on the channel, it's because I literally couldn't lol. Now it appears that after all these years, I finally can, so if you're interested in Ozzy Karaoke, please look forward to it. 👽 I'm going to start with his biggest hits and post them over on the CC Karaoke X channel (link to one of the videos is in this post). Those will get done over the next few weeks (or days lol). Then I'll make a point of working my way through the deeper cuts over time, and those will appear either here or over on the CCX channel. I'll prioritize it, so hopefully by the end of this year there can be a robust selection of a couple dozen Ozzy tracks or more, and even more than that into the future :) I'll keep working though the Black Sabbath tracks as well. watch video on watch page
28 - 3
I'm trying to come up with a kind of 'Master list' of bands that I want to focus on with the channels going into the future. Of course this list will never include everything because there's so many bands out there. What it can do though, is act as an easy go-to for me to just look over every day and find something to work on next. So I'm looking for suggestions on what to add. 🤔 Pretty much everything goes so long as I consider it 'safe for Youtube'. That means no Prince or The Eagles for example, or anything owned by Universal. Ideally I'm looking for bands in genres that align with the channel (Alternative, Folk, Classic, Metal, Prog, New Wave, Grunge, Brit-pop etc), but I'm willing to look at other stuff too.
If you haven't checked it out yet, I am now splitting the videos between this channel and the new CC Karaoke X channel, mainly based on a combination of which label the music is under, and the popularity of the track.
youtube.com/@CCKaraokeX
The new 2nd channel is also helping me get all the previously finished tracks back up faster. I still think that process is going to go well into July, just becasue there are so many tracks that need to be re-uploaded. On the bright side, once I've converted everything into MP4s and backed them up on my hard drives, I don't have to do it again. It's a grind, but I only have to do it once lol. Once I'm deeper into that process, I'll start finding ways for people to make specific song requests. For now, I'm just compiling a list of band ideas to move forward with.
The bands I have so far; [In the main category, meaning I'd like to aggressively pursue these bands]
Avenged Sevenfold, Alice In Chains, Arctic Monkeys
The Black Keys, Anathema, Bad Religion
Blur Arcade Fire, Dinosaur Jr
Bruce Springsteen, Audioslave, Interpol
David Bowie, Billy Joel, Kyuss
Death, Black Sabbath, Lamb Of God
Death Cab For Cutie, Blue Oyster Cult, Pink Floyd
Deftones, Chevelle, Radiohead
The Doors, Depeche Mode, SNFU
Dream Theater, Electric Light Orchestra, Suede
Fleetwood Mac, Foo Fighters, Symphony X
Frank Zappa, Incubus
, Genesis. Iron Maiden
Gojira, Jeff Buckley
, Goo Goo Dolls, Jimi Hendrix
Gorillaz, Kings Of Leon
, Green Day, Korn
Jane's Addiction, Modest Mouse
, Joy Division, Opeth
Led Zeppelin, Our Lady Peace
, Mastodon, Scorpions
Matchbox Twenty, Silverchair
, Morrissey, Sloan
Muse, The Strokes
, My Chemical Romance, Three Days Grace
Neil Young, System Of A Down, New Order, Nickelback
Oasis
, Panic! At The Disco, Pantera, Paramore
Pet Shop Boys
, Porcupine Tree, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Robert Plant
Slipknot
, The Smiths, Stone Sour, Stone Temple Pilots, Talking Heads
Third Eye Blind
, Tom Petty, Twenty One Pilots, Yes
Then I have a second list of bands I'd like to further consider. Maybe these bands end up being part of the main list, but if not, I still intend to do at least a handful (more) songs from them. They are;
AC/DC (should be main but a lot of songs are still blocked worldwide so I'm in wait and see mode)
Architects, 311
, Beach House, Beady Eye
Biffy Clyro
, Bouncing Souls, Chicago, City And Colour
Coheed And Cambria
, Crash Test Dummies, Dave Matthews Band, Death From Above 1979
The Dillinger Escape Plan
, Disturbed, Ed Sheeran, Faith No More
The Flaming Lips
, Foals, Foreigner, Franz Ferdinand
The Fray, Haken, Hall & Oates, Journey
Kansas, Lord Huron, Mad Season, Melvins
Michael Jackson, Motley Crue, Motion City Soundtrack
The National
, Noel Gallagher, Nomeansno, Pennywise
Pixies
, Phoebe Bridgers, The Pretenders, Psychedelic Furs
Rage Against The Machine
, Rainbow, Reel Big Fish, Screaming Trees
Sonic Youth
, Soundtrack Of Our Lives, Stereophonics
Train, Treble Charger
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I'm making solid progress converting my work files into videos to re-upload to both the main CC Karaoke channel and the new CC Karaoke X channel;
CC Karaoke X: youtube.com/@CCKaraokeX
One thing I've realized in going through all the tracks is how many of them I wanted (or needed) to fix up along the way. Adding backing vocals in a lot of cases .. especially for Paramore and My Chemical Romance, or just getting a better audio source or fixing up some timing issues in the video. So while many songs are just a 5 minute process of opening my save file and converting to video, numerous others are taking me over an hour 😅 Then with 1,000 videos to do this all with, it's a process...
I'm still estimating that it'll take me a good three months to get to (most of) everything. .. but I'm working top down, so posting the most popular tracks first and getting to the deeper cuts as I get to them. I've got a spreadsheet for all this, with every track color coded lol, so I know what the status of everything is. Blue for CCX, Orange for stuff I'm putting on the main channel .. and everything that I color coded 'Grey' for example, is over on the new Rumble channel.
rumble.com/user/CC_Karaoke
I figure somewhere along the way, once I've taken care of all the tracks down to a certain level on the list, I'll start to push into making brand new tracks again. I'm going to make a master list on my spreadsheets of all the bands I want to focus on, and research which ones I've been overlooking and want to add. If you have a band in mind, let me know.
Once I feel like I've got my feet planted firmly with everything being converted, backed up, organized etc, then I'll also look into starting to take requests (commissions). I might start a Firverr for that, but for now I have my patreon set up. There's a chat feature on there open to all free members if you want a way to reach me. In general, I aim to keep everything on there open to free members. The paid levels are literally just a way to donate for now, but I'll eventually add a request level.
www.patreon.com/c/user?u=22409390
In the meantime, if there's any tracks that were on the channel before that you want me to prioritize, feel free to let me know and I'll try to make a point of it. :)
263 - 47
I have returned! Thanks to everyone for your patience during these last couple of months. It has been tough being away, but also nice just taking a bit of time after so many years of going at this every single day. Now I'm ready to kick things back into gear and grow this project out for many years to come.
I did spend a fair bit of time trying to decide how best to proceed. I think that with the music industry being so vast, with all the different bands and labels, the best approach is for me to split the Karaoke content into three channels. Then we can see how things go, and further adjustments can always be made in the future.
The first channel is this one, the original CC Karaoke. This is where you'll find Linkin Park, Green Day, Stone Temple Pilots, Oasis, and much more. The main focus will be on bands under Warner, Sony, and The Orchard.
The second channel will be CC Karaoke X, found here;
youtube.com/@CCKaraokeX
This second channel will feature additional tracks from Warner and Sony, but also place a primary focus on the indie labels. Everything from Epitaph, to Merlin and Domino. The Arctic Monkeys will be on this channel, for example, along with Phoebe Bridgers, and Bad Religion.
These first two channels are combined onto the playlists that you can find on the landing page of this channel. I'll add them to the landing page of the second channel as well. So you can always use those to find everything in one place.
There's still about 1,000 tracks missing from these first two channels. One of the factors here is that I had all my work files saved on multiple drives, but I had not converted the files into HD video files to drag and drop onto Youtube or otherwise. I was in the process of doing this, but had intended to chip away at it over time. The situation has forced me to fast track that process, but it is going to take a little more time. The plus side is that once this is done, I'll always have them completed and stored on my drives, and then they'll always be ready to drag and drop in the future if needed.
I can't give an exact ETA on this (I'm hoping a couple/three months), but I am going to prioritize posting the biggest (most popular tracks) first and then work my way down the list. Hopefully this will help get the algorithm going. It'll also ensure that the tracks people most often wanna sing are up sooner than later. If you have a personal favorite that you know I've already done in past, feel free to ask and I can bump it up the list or direct you to it. :)
The third channel will be home to everything else and will be on Rumble. This is where you'll find Jimmy Eat World and Nirvana, among others. I chose Rumble because it has a particular feature called 'Personal use'. The idea here is that none of these videos will show up in search. In order to even be able to see them, you need to be following the channel. By following the channel, you affirm that you own your own copy of the music that you intend to study. I know that there's a lot of people out there who legitimately need these videos to practice their singing, as it comes up in comments every day. I won't be giving this third channel as much attention as the first two going forward, but I hope it can remain available for those who need it.
You can find that channel here;
rumble.com/user/CC_Karaoke
Hopefully this will work out, but if not, we can cross that bridge when we get there.
Finally, I got a lot of requests to start a Patreon.
You can find that here;
www.patreon.com/user?u=22409390
It's brand new as of my posting this. It won't ever host any of the videos, but it does offer an avenue for anyone to donate if they wish. It's also a place to connect with me and each other, since it offers a community chat feature, and private messaging, among other things. In future I plan on using this to take requests, but I'm going to hold off a bit longer on that while I burn through converting these video files. For the time being, I will use it as a place to connect with anyone who wants to join. :)
Otherwise, happy singing! I'll keep everyone updated as things progress.
592 - 114
Channel update! I decided that the safest thing to do is to lock everything down until May. It was a tough decision to make, but I think that if I didn't go all the way on this and play it as safe as possible, and I lost the channel, then I'd always have to look over my shoulder and wish I had done more to protect it.
At this point, all there is left to do is wait out the 90 day timer and hope for the best. Then, either way, I can promise that CC Karaoke will continue, somewhere, somehow, but hopefully here. I'll begin the process of bringing the tracks back up .. but not everything can be brought back. It's a major bummer, but Nirvana, Metallica, Megadeth, The Killers, CCR, Rush, and Queen (of all bands yes, the most pro-karaoke band of all time) among others will remain gone. It's not my choice. For the channel to continue in any form, anywhere, without being under threat, it's the only way.
That being said, there's a couple silver linings. First of all, Youtube has been improving (and changing) their audio quality over the years, so new uploads will sound superior to videos posted years ago. I'm also using better conversion software to convert my CDG work files into MP4 than I used to as well. .. so having to re-upload stuff just means that it'll sound and look better than it did before.
Second, the wealth of awesome bands that will be safe to work with is immense and I still couldn't get through it all in ten lifetimes. We're talking David Bowie, Muse, Coldplay, Green Day, Linkin Park, Joy Division/New Order, Paramore, Billy Joel, Silverchair, System of a Down, Pink Floyd, Mastodon, Lamb of God, Faith No More, Deftones, Blur, The Gorillaz, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead, The Smiths, The Talking Heads, Nickelback, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Neil Young and many more. I'm pumped up about it.
Also, I can count on my own two hands how many days in the last eight years I didn't spend at least a couple hours working on the channel. I have an opportunity now to just do some other things for a little while without constantly thinking about what channel workflow I need to finish next ... So, I think that will be healthy for me. I'm going to make the most of it, and then come back stronger.
I'll be sure to update everyone if there's anything more to say, but for the next three months, no news is good news. .. and if you can still see this post, it means things are going well. :) I'll check in on it and read and reply to comments as always.
All the best to everyone,
CC
791 - 255
So, the channel is on the ropes. Critical levels. I hoped it wouldn't come to this, and I've worked incredibly hard over the last few weeks to find any kind of solutions that would be the least disruptive for everyone. .. but here we are. Heck, I've put probably 50+ hours a week for the last 8 years of my life into this channel. It's the second most important thing in the world to me, and I know it means a lot to a lot of people.
First things first. Don't blame Youtube and don't blame the artists. I'm certain that this situation is no fault of Youtube, and that no individual band member from any band actually asked for this to happen. In fact, a lot of very supportive bands are getting caught in the crossfire here. Dragonforce, for example, have publically stated support for this content in the past, and yet I still got struck over one of their songs. This is the result of a complex tangle of people more powerful than we can ever fathom.
..That's what makes this situation so difficult, because it is impacting so many people .. but I have to do everything I can to save and protect the channel for the future.. and that means I'm going to be deleting a ton of videos today. Basically anything that could remotely even possibly pose any kind of threat has to go. Some of it can then be re-uploaded, but everything going forward needs to be cleared before it gets posted. It's the only way to go. It's not required by Youtube, but it's the only way to best avoid this situation in future.
I know this means a lot of people's playlists are going to have a ton of stuff go missing .. and people who subscribed to this channel for songs and bands that'll no longer be available. Some of it will come back, but there's a chance that a lot won't. I just don't know yet. It's not up to me. I'm really sorry for that. I can't look at this any way and think that it's good for everyone, ..but as ever, maybe now more than ever, I appreciate all the support.
The next 2 or 3 days will be critical. After that, if there's no further complications, things should be OK going forward, though it'll be a long climb back to having a robust selection of tracks available. If things are not OK, well, I'll keep you all posted and we'll cross that bridge if we get there.
All the best to everyone, and again, my sincere apologies for stuff you won't be ble to sing anymore, and great appreciation for all of you who have enjoyed it over the years and will in future.
937 - 253
After several weeks of 12 hour days, the majority of everything that is moving over to the new channel has been re-uploaded there :)
youtube.com/@CCKaraokeEx
All the videos are now in HD (if they were not before), and there's a new thumbnail design. I'll start replacing the thumbnails on this channel with the new design in the coming weeks.
There's about 70 videos I want to fully remake for the EX channel, and those will be the next ones posted over there (also in the coming weeks). Everything else, if it was originally posted from 2017-2019, is going to go on a 3rd channel that I'm calling Dusty Karaoke. That channel is not active yet, but I'll get to work on it soon. I may move a few more things over to the EX channel in future, but hopefully that can be done one band at a time if I decide to, and I can announce it before hand in a community post so people have time to be aware of anything on their own playlists.
This channel did come under threat, and that was a motivating factor, but the idea to split the channel into three pieces is one I've been intending on for a while now. Basically, it was getting to be a major stress and pain trying to juggle 5,000+ uploads on one channel. Youtube has a nice enough UI in some areas but it's still a real challenge trying to dig through so much material. Also, every band is an individual entity with their own philosophies, and that presents additional challenges.
..so everything that can keep food on my table is going to be here and get the most of my attention. Kinda important lol, both for living, and if I ever want to pursue that ultimate dream of being a husband and father. Everything that won't, goes onto the EX channel. This doesn't mean that I'll ignore the EX channel. A few of my favorite bands are there .. and so I'll be sure to give it some attention .. but at least now I don't have to click through thousands of videos trying to identify everything all the time. The third channel is going to have all those really old 2017-2019 vids that I haven't remade yet. This way they'll all be in one place and easy for me to identify, and scroll through, and people can leave comments telling me to get at this track or that. Most of them are deep cuts at this point.
Otherwise, I've got 120 tracks mixed to be remade for this main channel. I want to tear through making the videos for these and getting em posted. This will be priority #1 over the next 4 to 6 weeks, and you'll see more tracks than usual getting posted each night. Once that's complete, and I have the Dusty channel up and running, I'll finally feel like for the first time in years, that everything is well organized 😂 .. and then I can look at starting on requests/commissions. .. and also really pushing the channel further into where I want it to be in the long term with new stuff.
FINALLY! The algoithm really hates me right now 💀. This is to be expected, but at least since last week, the vast majority of you are finding and interacting with the channel manually .. by searching for me and choosing to click on CC Karaoke. So thank you to all of you. While I do hope that the algorithm forgives me in the coming weeks, I generally feel that no matter how many times YT recommends that someone click on a video, none of this works without so many people choosing to click on a CC Karaoke video over the other options. As always, I promise I'll keep workin on all this as long as I can. This whole splitting the channel move is meant to try and help ensure that for the long haul. 🚀 🎶
171 - 24
I'm working to restore the playlists :)
Hey everyone. My apologies for any confusion over the last week or two. I know a bunch of songs suddenly disappeared from the channel. The short version is that I'm working as quickly as I can to restore those tracks, but it will take a bit of time to get at everything.
You can find the tracks here as they are uploaded
youtube.com/@CCKaraokeEX
You can also just find them through the many playlists on the channel's main page. I'm going to add them back to those playlists and also make the playlist collection available on the EX landing page as well.
...But if you had the old uploads on your own playlists, you'll need to re-add the new ones. I'm sorry.
The longer version of this story is a bit more complicated, but I have been thinking of creating an 'EX' channel for a long time now (or maybe even a couple of them but one is good for now). Ideally I would have rolled this out more slowly, without so much confusion lol. .. Though in reality, it's something I just kept putting off and maybe never would have gotten around to doing. If you're wondering why do it at all... the best answer I can probably give right now is 'categorization'. There's a lot of bands in the world and every one of them is an individual entity under a larger umbrella. It's a kind of complicated mess that the Karaoke community at large tries to make sense of behind the scenes, but it's never easy. This channel had ballooned to over 5,000 videos and it was getting really complicated to manage, frankly.
Anyway, the EX videos have blue text instead of orange because hey, I felt like chaning the color lol. There's also a new thumbnail design. Some stuff will now always go over there, and some over here, though bands on this main channel will tend to be more of a focus. I can't say that's exclusively the case because I really want to put a focus on The Tragically Hip (for example), but there's just so much music out there that I can't do everything in a lifetime, so I need to keep it organized and pick my priorities. Everything still over here and anything that will be that hasn't got enough attention yet (Opeth for example), is where I'll look to first when deciding what to make next. If/when I start taking requests, then obviously, the request will supersede that. I need to finish getting all this organized first though.
Sometime down the line I'm also going to create a third channel that I'm tentatively naming 'Dusty Karaoke'. This is where I want to put all the older videos (2017-2019 era vids) that need fixing but I don't have the time or technology to fix yet.
If you subscribe to the EX channel, just be aware that your subscriptions feed will be overloaded with videos posted next week, but once the big overload of tracks is done, the pace of posting will become more normal lol.
Again, sorry for the confusion. In all though, the plan is that within the coming days/weeks, most of the stuff that was here before will still be accessible on Youtube as it was before, either through search or on the playlists. If you want me to prioritize a certain band or track to restore, just let me know :) If it's something I can't bring back (there's a couple things), I'll let you know!
All the best, and happy singing!
295 - 60
A channel update! (For those wondering what's up and where I'm going) 😎
The development of AI technology over the last few years has been pretty meteoric. While some parts of that frighten me (machine overlords), it has been pretty awesome for the Karaoke community. 'De-mixing' AI has allowed the many dozens of new Karaoke brands to make all these videos in recent years. Basically, using 'AI' to remove the vocals from any song, or isolate backing vocals etc.
For my own part, I've remained extremely conservative about this technology. I began this channel before de-mixing AI was a thing, focusing on stems and instrumental mixes, and have moved very slowly on adopting the new technology compared to my peers. This is because I thought that the quality of the de-mixing AI results just wasn't good enough on most things for a long time. It has gotten substantially better over the last five years though.
I began really adopting it about three years ago in earnest to isolate backing vocals. I mention this because the 'Updated videos' are for sure still a big part of my immediate channel plans. Back when I started all this in 2017, there was no AI to effectively remove vocals or isolate backings vocals. I began the channel working with stems and instrumental mixes, and when there was no backing vocals stem, I just settled for posting the Karaoke without backing vocals. Now that there are AI models to isolate backing vocals, I want to make sure I add them to as many old videos as possible, and include them in all new videos. I've been taking careful notes on this .. and there's a couple hundred tracks that I still can't isolate .. (thinking of some Blink 182 tracks in particular among others) .. so those videos will remain with the old thumbnails and low resolution until they can be fixed. For the rest, I am working on updating them. 'Red Hot Chili Peppers - Otherside' is the most significant recent example of this. There are currently several hundred videos on the channel for which de-mixing AI was used to help with the backing vocals, either from splitting vocal stems or pulling them from the official finished mix and them splitting them.
Second, all of the videos with the little 'Neural' UVR logo in the bottom left hnd corner of the thumbnails were made exclusively with de-mixing models. No original instrumental mixes or stems aiding. There's a 'UVR' playlist on the main page of my channel that lists all of the videos done this way. I've dabbled in this full on approach over the years but never committed to it because I felt there were still too many quality issues with the final results.
Well, the latest and greatest AI model has me sold. It's not perfect .. and there will be better models in the future, but this new model blows all past models out of the water. It's a revelation, frankly. A massive leap forward .. and it produces results that make me want to really dive into using this technology more significantly going forward. This was always going to be the long term future of the channel, and I'm pumped to feel like that future is finally arriving.
First things first though .. I'm going to focus on updating the existing tracks from the UVR playlist for a little while. They are already on the channel and being used and I want to clean up the audio on them. From there, I'll expand out to do tons more stuff I've been wanting to do for a long time. Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Black Sabbath and more.
Also, I've still got thousands of instrumentals and stems collected in many folders and drives that deserve attention. Up front, I've got about 300 more tracks from stems that are mixed and just need the video work finished, so those will get a higher level of priority in the coming months. Everything from Queen to Smash Mouth, Linkin Park, Megadeth and more.
Once I've got the main house cleaning a bit more settled, I plan to FINALLY start taking requests ... I know .. been a long time coming .. but it's in the plans. I need to sort out how and where I'll organize that, but it's coming. I'll update more on that here in the new year :)
348 - 88
I have begun my 4th summer road trip! I got going a bit later than usual this year due to bashing my bones skiing back at the end of April 😅 They seem to have healed just fine though! So I'm off and headed up the North Coast of Canada for the next 82 days. Starting on the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island, and then the Great Bear Rainforest and Yellowhead HWY. Most places along this route have suspect cell signal, but I got Starlink, so hopefully that'll cut through the tree canopy and deliver me internet 🚀 There has been a ton of packing and upacking and general trip prep over the last few days, but as I get settled into the summer flow, I expect to do plenty of hiking and channel work. Summer is always great for cranking out tracks LOL. It takes a lot less electricity than gaming. ⚡
161 - 15
I started going to Karaoke nights at my local bar back around 2008-ish. It was awesome, but I began to realize that that the audio was often awful. Well, I suppose sometimes the only way to fix something is to fix it yourself ... so I started up CC Karaoke with the objective of making better Karaoke. I never imagined it would grow this far, but I'm very grateful it has, and for everyone who has benefitted from it. It's a long process, but this project will continue for as long as I'm able.