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Commercial karaoke establishments are, outside Japan and Korea, not very relevant.

The at-home market in the UK, on the other hand, is pretty significant. None of these households know how to operate Adobe Audition or something similar: they just want to sing along with whatever is on the telly*.

There are lots of companies catering to that market. In fact: in the past, Apple was more than happy to allow them on their platform, to fill in the gaps left by Apple's inability to negotiate certain agreements.

In the past year or so, Apple has gotten more and more restrictive with regards to "soundalike" content. And we now know why... Is this inevitable? Possibly. Is it fair? Maybe. Is it yet another cottage industry that Apple strangulates? Definitely.

*And yes, this is a very simplistic caricature by choice. Of course UK consumers are more sophisticated, but...

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JohnBooty|3 years ago

Thank you for explaining that.

I didn't realize there was a commercial home market for those professionally produced karaoke tracks.

If I'm understanding things somewhat correctly now, this does sound like it will be a large blow to that market.