Liz Gannes

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Singboard: Karaoke Without the Cheesy Videos

Singboard is a soon-to-launch start-up that dynamically creates mashups to create an online karaoke experience.

According to Singboard co-founder Ray Chan, karaoke on the Web is usually not ideal because it involves cheesy made-for-karaoke videos featuring nameless nobodies instead of real singers. Plus, as much as it’s fun to gather friends around a computer or in a Google+ Hangout, there’s a lot more to be done to make online karaoke social, Chan said in a recent interview at 500 Startups in Mountain View, Calif., where his team is about to finish the Accelerator program.

Singboard mashes up official music videos, karaoke tracks and song lyrics. It doesn’t license any of the parts, because it keeps the streams intact as it layers them together to form a whole, Chan said.

Chan said he and his co-founders are building tools to help users to record themselves singing karaoke and then overlay their own voices onto official music videos — which he thinks is way cooler and more likely to be shared than amateur Webcam karaoke video. Singboard will also emphasize singing and sharing videos with friends.

Online karaoke has been done many time before — even Myspace had a karaoke product — but Chan argued that the combination of official music videos and a more social experience can set Singboard apart.

In the video embedded above, Chan gave us a demo using Justin Bieber’s “Baby” but said his own favorite song to sing is Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie.” The first version of Singboard should be released before the end of August, he said.

Prior to Singboard, the same team had started work on a group photo-sharing app called vvall.

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