Karaoke 2.0

Congratulations, Mr. President-elect. And best of luck averting Depression 2.0! In the meantime, forgive me for reaching for the panic button: with unemployment expected to move into the double digits, I'm looking for a way to survive until you get us out of this mess. So here's what I'm thinking, and please do not tell my wife: I'm planning on turning my basement into a full-service karaoke bar.

Everyone knows karaoke is huge internationally. It's getting bigger in the U.S., thanks in part to the popularity of video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Which means that my home karaoke bar will need to offer more than your average console. Hence my interest in a number of karaoke sites--and maybe cocktails made with Everclear--that could help make Quittner's Qaraoke Qorner a bustling home business in 2009.

To get started, all you need is a mike (internal or USB-connected) or video camera. MySpace Karaoke ksolo.myspace.com and YouTube are free but pretty thin; it would be hard to charge my neighbors to sing along to some joker doing "Memories" on YouTube. By contrast, the Karaoke Channel Online thekaraokechannel.com streams scrolling lyrics and professional-grade karaoke, in instrumental or sing-along mode, for $14.95 a day or $9.95 a month for a minimum of two months. As far as I can tell, with more than 4,000 songs and close to 100 added a week, it has the biggest music library out there.

But my favorite interface is Karaoke Party karaokeparty.com) where all the songs are free. (Granted, there are only 160 of them.) Since deep down, most karaoke addicts really want to be told how good they are, the site uses a Simon Cowellesque algorithm to score your performance. Co-founder Mats Fors says that after he and his partners managed complex websites for banks, building a karaoke site was easy. "We saw the opportunity for a good karaoke solution," he says. Don't we all?