I have seen quite a few posts about is Karaoke Dying? While I don't think it is dying it is not the business most hosts who have been around awhile remember. In the past there were fewer venues having karaoke night and fewer hosts supplying the karaoke service for the venues. Things have changed dramatically in the last few years and I wanted to find out if a study had been done with hard data, and not just the local opinions of hosts. After all hosts have a good knowledge of their own backyard and not so much the big picture of hosting nationally.I came upon this study and I'm putting the link on here it is the newest information I could find and makes projections as to segments of the karaoke industry up until 2022. www.prweb.com/releases/2014/prweb9427899.htm
The take away I came with is that while karaoke is not dying it is not exactly the same as in the past. Every product or service has it's own market life cycle, the karaoke industry in this country at least has been in a steady decline mode since it's peak in 2003. Annual sales of karaoke equipment and software has plunged 80% since 2003 from 200 million gross sales to 40 million gross sales today.
The industry is in a "protracted decline" said music trade group NAMM aka National Assn. of Music Merchants.
Also the industry took a big hit when the economic meltdown came in 2008, for 5 years 5% of the industry contracted with a total loss of 25% of former business. Growth in the industry after the contraction has been at .01% while the general economy has averaged 2% growth, which means the lost ground was never made up and the industry as a whole is a smaller part of the economy than it was in it's heyday. The outlook isn't good since this type of growth can be expected until 2022, due to various forces that are beyond the control of the industry as a whole.
