Building the Library

Introduction

You have many options in building your library. You can:

• Index sample songs that you downloaded during installation into your library. If you didn’t download the sample songs, you can get them from this link.
• Purchase downloadable karaoke music using the built-in kJams store. This is the way most kJams users obtain their music.
• Download music from other music sites and index them into kJams.
• Copy music from your karaoke CD-Gs into the kJams library. This is called ripping.
• Index karaoke tunes that are already on your hard drive into the library.
• Download free songs from Karaoke Version and Chartbusters.

Note:I used the word “index” rather than “copy” because kJams does NOT COPY when you add music to your library. It only makes a note of where the song resides on the internal drive and it then uses the original files right where they are. This can be a big problem for newbies who download music to their desktop and then add the files to the kJams library. Once the files are added, they think they can trash the file from the desktop. But in reality, this is the only file that exists.

If you are new to karaoke, you probably don’t have any tunes on your hard drive or any karaoke CDs to rip. No problem! To try out kJams’ features, you really only need to download a few songs. Free songs will work just fine.

You can also go to the Chartbuster music store to find free streaming songs, but I’ll talk about that in a minute.

Understanding Tags (Meta Data)

To fully enjoy your karaoke experience, you’ll want to know something about the songs in your library. Besides the name of the song and artist, you might want to know the album, track #, or even the duration of the song. (Especially if your neighbor Bruno is singing Light My Fire.) This meta data is displayed in your kJams library and can be customized to suit your needs.

When you purchase music through the kJams Store, I magically “tag” your music files behind the scenes and voilá—your library displays song name, artist, album, song duration, and whatever other meta data is available. While karaoke stores differ in the kind of meta data provided—for example, some stores provide Composer, while others do not—all stores provide the basic meta data. Unfortunately, if you obtain your music from any other source, I can’t promise you’ll have adequately tagged files. In fact, I can almost guarantee you will have to do some tag editing.

If you want to expand your meta data (for example, to include Composer, Song Writer, Date, etc.), you will most likely have to enter this data manually, even if you purchase through the kJams stores.

It’s completely up to you how much meta data to include in your library, but to start, I recommend that you keep it simple. For now, let’s just add some songs to the library.

Adding Sample Songs

The first step in building your library is to index the sample songs you downloaded when you installed kJams. (By the way, it’s okay to skip this step. If you know you want to purchase music right away, then you don’t really need any sample songs.)

1. From the kJams main screen, click on File.
2. Click on Add to Library.
3. Locate and open the folder that contains the downloaded music files. (This is the file you specified during installation.)
4. Select the file.
5. Click on Open.

The music file is indexed to the library and is ready for playing.