Buzz Watch: kSolo.com is A Lot of Fun

Authored by Jay Baage on October 5, 2006 - 6:42am.

From Digital Music Forum West 2006: Why on earth would people want to listen to cheesy Karaoke-singers online? Well, if it was your friend, boss or someone famous singing, would you not be temped to easedrop? I sure would and it turns out a lot of other people would too. kSolo.com is an online success-story that is now part of MySpace and Fox Interactive.

Nimrod Lev, founder and GM at kSolo.com, is admitably not a very good singer. In fact, he had not even sung Karaoke before he came up with the idea for kSolo.com. The inspiration came from hearing a street artist perform in the subway in New York.

“It just made sense to let people express themselves this way on the Internet”, he said in an interview with Billboard Magazine Executive Editor Tamara Conniff at Digital Music Forum West, a conference organized by Digital Media Wire at the BelAge Hotel in Los Angeles.

Basically, kSolo.com let’s you ring Karaoke online, record your performances and share them with others.

“A lot of people are making asses out of themselves, definitely, but there are also some talented people out there. We have already had one label contacted us about one of the singers that uploaded her Karaoke-performance on our site”, said Nimrod Lev.

kSolo just got acquired by Fox Interactive. MySpace founder Tom Anderson surfed MySpace profiles and discoved kSolo on one of the profiles. He liked it and the rest is history.

“Right now we are subscription based. I think that if people are not willing to pay, it is probably a bad service. We charge $10 per month”, said Nimrod Lev.

If you want to listen to Nimrod Lev sing a beautiful duet version of “I Got You Babe” with Tamara Conniff, go to Basecamp’s website for audio downloads from the conference.