Sing Your Lungs Out On MyVideoKaraoke: New Video Publishing Arcade Makes Grassroots Video Singing Fun For Everyone

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Sing your favorite songs on video and share them online! As anticipated a few days ago, I am launching today my online video music station for broadband users only.

This new site is my first humble effort at putting into practice some of the grassroots publishing ideas I have learned about online, while mixing in my passion for music, video and for making people having true fun.

Called MyVideoKaraoke, this new site is a grassroots music video clips clearinghouse where anyone can upload, share and download video music clips of normal people singing their favorite songs.

MyVideoKaraoke is a fully web-based free site that allows anyone to upload and share his favorite video clips of people singing.

MyVideoKaraoke is all about generating user-created content that has unique value when aggregated together. The project could also show how, while having fun you can indeed create a flywheel that produces free entertainment, creative user-contributions and which further explores the venues for mashups, re-mixing and sustainable re-use of existing content in new and innovative ways.

There are little or no restrictions on the size of the videos uploaded (up to 50MB for now) and there are no limits to the bandwidth utilized by the people who will be watching the clips.

Uploading video music clips doesn't cost anything but registering through a super-simple 4-field registration form.

MyVideoKaraoke supports RSS, tags, integrates a full search engine and differently from other similar services it uploads videos in full original quality (Windows Media or Quicktime) and it fully allows users (even unregistered ones) to download any video they like.

All content uploaded to MyVideoKaraoke is bound to a Creative Commons license allowing full re-use and re-distribution of the music clips posted.

MyVideoKaraoke is organized around a few musical genres, which will grow with your suggestions in the coming days, and around the "latest" and the "most popular" sections collecting the newest and most viewed video music clips.

Once registered and signed-in, you will see an "Upload Video" button show up on the left vertical navigation of your user interface.

And here is what you will see once you click through it:

So uploading video clips is very easy and straightforward and does not require any technical how. Video clips are accepted in both Quicktime .mov and Windows Media Video .wmv video file formats. Again 50MB max size for now, and no bandwidth restrictions.

Multiple RSS-podcast feeds allow you to subscribe to the new video clips being posted at MyVideoKaraoke through your favorite media playback device. Here is some direct subscription links for some popular podcast feed aggregators.

RSS feeds available cover Latest Clips uploaded, Most Popular ones, specific music categories, individual users and even "search queries".

Any video uploaded can be easily tagged with delicious-like keyword tags (comma separated), and logged in users can build their own "favorites" page by adding preferred clips to it with just one-click.

Uploaded videos information can be edited and when needed users can even delete their own clips.

For today, what you will find today on the site is mostly fruit of the generous contribution of some friends who have been willing to play around with me and have allowed me to shoot this initial mini-collection of amateur music videos.

Being the very first public release, be prepared to encounter bugs, issues, and any other typical problem a new service like this may have on its first day out.

So please be gentle and understanding while helping me identify as many possible of these possible errors. Here is a feedback form.

There are other features and facilities that you may want to have as well or see added in the near future. For all of these please feel free to post your comments here below or to contact me directly at Robin.Good [at] masternewmedia.org.

Business Model?

Well, I really started this because I thought that it would have been lots of fun for me and other people to use it. I didn't have a specific business idea in mind.

Then, as I went about building it I realized that there were a few interesting models I could have adopted.

The first one is a simple ad contextual model which uses Google AdSense which I have already implemented on MyVideoKaraoke and on which I have spent some special energies in making the visual integration of information ads and actual content as seamless as possible.

Click above image to enlarge it

From my point of view, other options available include, individual clips and music categories sponsorships, as well as optional premium features which could allow integrated video recording and uploading of your songs (a-la VideoEgg). The advantage of this last feature is that you would not need anymore to use Windows Movie Maker or iMovie to create and encode your own clips, but all this would be done on the MyVideoKaraoke site itself.

What else do you see?

Backstage

It took me a long time to bring this project to life, as, outside of Top-IX providing me with its unlimited storage and bandwidth, I have had basically no backers nor partners.

I have hired, thanks to a good recommendation from Rok Hrastnik, a very good engineer to develop and implement the system architecture, and have myself worked together with my old Information Designer Riccardo Gemma to create all of the user interface.

Overall we have spent about 1.5 months of full work of one person to do what you see now.

The most enjoyable part has of course been the shooting of the first set of video clips which has started just about a month ago or so.

Some of the first video clips and the people behind them are truly unique and at least two of them deserve a specific mention:

Manuel, is a 16 year old guy, who goes to school and is a great friend of my nephew Nico (same age). He is a genuine rapper and what he has done in this clip is nothing short of amazing. While the instrumental track is from Notorius Big, the words he raps on it are all his (in Italian) and the clip sound is shot live with his actual voice. I find Manuel really great and having some true rap talent.

Raffi, is a very old friend of mine, a born DJ and, among friends, a great imitator of many music stars. So I invited him up to improvise a rap song in my office without any rehearsal. He came all dressed up like a real back rapper, with chains, hat, big rings and even a fake silver tooth a-la Mike Tyson. You must check him out.

Wishes

I would love to see some sports fans upload their team songs, and can't wait to see some of the younger crowd do some choreographic music videos.

It would also be great if some of the people with some great singing talent could leverage MyVideoKaraoke to show off their potential at zero cost to them.

Video feed

MyVideoKaraoke (Latest Clips) Video feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Myvideokaraoke

Credits

I would like to credit Gregor Odlazek for having executed the engineering work and my long-time partner Riccardo Gemma for his design support.

Also thanks to Manuel, Nico, Helio, Chiara, Roberto y Yudy, Valerio, Giovanni and all my friends who have helped me out to create the first set of video clips you now see online.

A big thanks for this goes to Top-IX, here in Italy, who has long been a very supportive partner in helping me launch projects that would leverage innovative and popular uses of broadband. First with TheWeblogProject and now with MyVideoKaraoke, the team of professionals at Top-IX has gone way out of his way to try to give us the best support and infrastructure available. Top-IX is an non-profit internet exchange promoting the intelligent use and adoption of broadband for business, enterprise information exchange, new media and entertainment.

All your feedback and comments are worth gold.
Keep them coming!