Short answer: if your song is in their catalogue, use KaraFun. The problem is when it isn't.
Catalogue. Tens of thousands of ready tracks, with lyrics timed by hand, mixes made by people and backing vocals. Nothing automatic comes close in quality per track.
If you want to sing a well-known hit, you want it working now, and you don't want to deal with files at all, it's KaraFun. No argument.
Catalogues are built on commercial demand. What's always left out:
And the case that comes up most: you already have the file and want to sing over it. A catalogue service doesn't do that — not a flaw, a different product.
| Catalogue (KaraFun) | Generator (StarSinger) | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the music comes from | their library | a file you already have |
| Quality per track | better — made by hand | automatic, fails on distorted vocals |
| Song not in the library | no way around it | that's the use case |
| How long it takes | plays instantly | has to process first |
| Pitch scoring | yes | yes, note by note |
Search your song in the catalogue. Found it? Use the catalogue. Didn't find it, and you have the file? Then a generator solves it, with the caveat that the lyrics come from automatic transcription and you'll be reviewing them.
It depends why you're switching. If it's price, smaller and free catalogues exist. If it's because your song isn't in the catalogue, no catalogue solves that — you need a tool that generates the karaoke from a file you already have.
The service is built around its own catalogue. To sing over your own file, the route is separating the vocals and timing the lyrics elsewhere, with UVR or an automatic generator.
Only if the songs you want aren't in the catalogue. A hand-made track beats any automatic generation on quality; the generator wins when the track simply doesn't exist.
StarSinger does those three steps for you. You upload a file you already have, it separates the vocals, transcribes the lyrics with per-syllable timing and gives you a karaoke that plays in the browser, with pitch scoring. You can try it without paying: the Free plan does 3 songs a month and asks for no card — the vertical video comes out watermarked. Past that, Pro is US$ 3.99 a month.
The caveats, because they're real: the transcription gets words wrong on screamed or heavily distorted vocals, and processing takes 2 to 3 minutes per song with the cloud accelerator on, and over 10 when it is down.
Try it free