Party-Rocks

With Asian blood running through my every vessel, I won’t lie: I love to sing. And I believe so do the Americans when they are drunk. So why is Karaoke not as popular in U.S. unlike practically the entire Asian nations? Why aren’t more people enjoying their weekend nights in Karaoke box where they can rock the mic's and shine?

The problem is not that they don’t like Karaoke. Music is universal. It appeals to everyone and every race. I have seen my White friends pouring their souls out singing, most of time in horrifying off-pitch voices, when they are happy, drunk, or both. Latin people do not just sing, but they go onto the floor and dance when their songs are played. Middle Easterns love music so much that they make movies that are 3 hours long during which actors and actress basically sing and dance the entire time. Blacks? Shoot, they don't even need to hear the music; they straight up air-rap all the time. You see, music is in our DNA.

It is the location that is problematic. Just as we learned in class, let us create a typical UT college student persona to take closer look. A young, active, and maybe bootylicious 20-years old male/female UT students would love to go party on the weekends. He/she would ether go to 6th street or West campus parties. It is unlikely that our persona will go away from the parties and down to north of Lamar where Karaoke district is located. Also driving will be the necessary mean of transportation. And in Texas, you drink, drive, and go to Jail. Finding designated drivers would be pain-in-the-butt.

Solution to the location problem….. drum roll please for the new innovation….. is to provid digital Karaoke systems to TVs (like pay per view for a boxing match) so young people can sing at their houses. The product name will be Party-Rocks. The idea is that, if people enjoy Karaoke but just aren’t willing to drive to a place away from parties, then why don’t we move it right into the parties? Before I explain this innovation in more detail, let us first remember this is possible today due to how advanced technology has become. First we will digitalize all of songs into “mother system”. Then we set up sub-systems, like game counsels or HDTV devices, to TVs at apartments and houses. People can request songs through this device which sends information back and then receive requested song inputs from “mother system”. Consider how advanced online gaming has become, to simply send and receive songs will definitely be fast and effective. The charge will be in pay-per-hour for the time from when the user activates his account to when he closes it.

Further, since the majority of the process is digital or machine work, the cost will be minimum. This means that we can spend more money into research on what type of songs will be favored (which will also be cheap thanks to advancement of technology and Internet). We can also take advantage of low cost by often playing with the prices and do promotions to analyze and determine the most profitable price.

In addition to being innovative, Party-Rocks is also creative in a marketing sense that it combines participative games like “Guitar Heroes” or “Rock Bands” with party settings. These games mentioned are wildly popular among young people. But whenever I played, I have always felt that setting was too somber. Try to finish this sentence: I was playing legendary hard-rock songs in full blast while I was……..sitting on a couch during a day-time when it is fully bright outside. The experience was just anti-climatic. Although the game itself was fun, I felt the setting could have been better. Yet, it is also anti-climactic in a reverse way to play games if you are drunk in a party and try to have some “high” time.

My idea is to implement Karaoke into partying settings. Americans love “Rock Bands” and “Guitar Heroes” and also love to drink. Karaoke is an upgrade of these games to a more live-like setting that will be suited for parties. And singing and drinking would be positive reinforcement to one another. If you are drunk, you wouldn’t be shy to sing your hearts out. And if you are having good time, then you would drink even more, and afterwards go sing more. Your fun multiplies every time you go through this cycle of sing-drink-sing. The party ends as a blast for everyone and with it being success, more orders for Part-Rocks follow the next weekend.

It will be a smashing hit.