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MySpace launches karaoke service in Japan

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Online social-networking titan MySpace has launched a karaoke service in Japan, expanding its amateur crooner channel to a nation rich with lovers of the pastime.

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“If you had told me years ago we would launch an online karaoke site in Japan, I would have told you it is like selling ice to the Eskimos,” said MySpace Karaoke general manager Nimrod Lev.

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“Boy was I wrong. It seems like the land of karaoke has nothing even close to that. We met with all the leading companies there and they loved what they saw.”

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MySpace Karaoke lays claim to being the world’s “largest user-generated music service,” logging more than eight million visitors since it launched in May of last year in Canada and the United States.

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In October, the News Corp-owned social networking website overhauled its karaoke channel to let amateurs post online video of themselves in all their singing glory.

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MySpace has arranged licensing deals with music publishers to spare users of its karaoke channel from hassles regarding song copyrights.

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MySpace bills its online video recorder as innovative, custom-built technology that lets people record themselves singing by using computers equipped with microphones, web-cameras and Internet connections.

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Users have submitted more than a million recordings of songs to the website, according to MySpace.

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Workers at MySpace offices in Japan spent months tailoring the karaoke service to the local language.

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“This was an extensive process,” Lev said. “We had to adapt it to the smallest nuances of the Japanese language.”

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An estimated 40% of Japan’s population, approximately 50 million people, do karaoke, according to statistics cited by MySpace.

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“What we do is a form of self-expression through music,” Lev said. “It definitely falls into the MySpace category of giving users more tools to express themselves.”

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