"The top 5 reasons KTV is garbage compared to karaoke
When you arrive in Taiwan one of the first thing you’ll notice as you leave the airport is that there’s three things in absolute abundance in Taiwan.
7-11′s, neon covered betel nut stands and hundreds and hundreds of KTV venues.
Traditionally I’ve known the concept of KTV as the much more familiar karaoke that we do in the west in bars. You usually go with some friends, give the DJ a stub requesting a song and depending on how busy it is eventually get to sing infront of a live audience.
When you’re not singing you’re running around talking to people like you would in a normal bar, or watching other people sing really really well – or make complete dicks of themselves. Either way, you’re having a good time.
KTV on the other hand sucks all the fun out of karaoke and places you in a safe comfortable and very reserved environment. Kind of like the difference between going out to bar for drinks for someone’s birthday and having a McDonalds ice cream cake party.
Having experienced Taiwanese KTV a few times now – I thought today I’d like the top 5 reasons KTV is garbage when compared to karaoke.
1. KTV perpetuates a lack of self confidence and cultural shyness
I still struggle a bit with the Chinese concept of face as it’s not something I naturally think about in my day to day life. Speaking direct and bluntly (but not necessarily rudely) is something that comes naturally to me so it’s not often that I choose my wording to avoid face loss.
For example, whilst I have no problems with getting up and making an idiot out of myself if I can’t sing a song infront of a bar of strangers, survery the average Taiwanese person and they’ll tell you this is something they wouldn’t do in a million years.
There is a slight shift in the younger Taiwanese generation but by and large looking stupid in public is top of the list of things to avoid – especially when you’re wearing your best clothes and are out with friends.
KTV removes any possible risk of public embarrassment and places you in the company of only the friends you choose to go out with. The entire experience is like some kind of nanny nation sing-a-long night.
In a culture where fully developed girls run around with the mindset of a twelve year old and cute rules supreme you’d think some growing up would be in order.
But no, KTV is and continues to be the number one passtime in Taiwan and I suspect will continue to be for a very long time to come yet.
2. There isn’t any aspect of KTV that couldn’t be done in your lounge room
A typical KTV venue places you in a smallish to medium sized lounge room with a giant LCD television and ample speakers. There’s usually couches to sit on and a large coffee table in the middle of the room to place your food and drinks.
In short, it’s like any lounge room you’d find in someone’s house.
Given that you’re not performing infront of anyone but your friends, it boggles the mind as to why people find it fun to pay stupid money to have a sing infront of their friends in what is essentially a rented lounge room.
I know that most people still live with their parents at home in Taiwan but seriously, nobody has a free loungeroom that could do the job?
3. The music selection is crap
Understandably most KTV joints in Taiwan have an abysmal spattering of token English songs for people to sing. I get the impression that they’re included more as a token gesture for when locals want to poke fun at English as opposed to any attempt of genuine inclusion of English into KTV.
Having said that Taiwan is a Chinese speaking country so I don’t hold the lack of English against them too much. Well, I wouldn’t if Chinese music wasn’t so horrendously bad.
Your typical KTV song book is page after page of nauseating Chinese love ballads. If it’s not someone whining about their breakup or how much they miss someone, then their whining about how nobody loves them or how hard their successful relationships are.
Give a Taiwanese the microphone in a KTV bar and you pretty much sentence yourself to a night of wrist slitting pain. This of course comes from someone trying to learn about Taiwanese culture so you can only imagine just how bad it is.
4. Nobody socialises
Just like a regular bar, one of the biggest drawcards of a night out is the social aspect. The concept of KTV completely squashes this idea of social interaction and completely confines you to the people you started the night out with.
I’m not saying their boring or anything but sometimes it is nice to just wind up talking to randoms, or communally enjoying someone’s atrocious singing together.
Even in the KTV venues that have an all you can eat buffet area there’s little to no social interaction between patrons. People leave their little KTV fortress rooms, fill up a plate of food in silence and then scurry back to the safeness of their room.
Now a point should be made here that should there be a market for it, I can totally appreciate that not everyone wants to sing infront of other people and enjoy a communal atmosphere whilst doing so.
However for those of us that do every so once in a while – we don’t have a choice. From what I’ve seen regular karaoke bars don’t exist in Taiwan.
5. You can’t laugh at anyone
One of the biggest problems with singing infront of just your friends (or in my case a g0od mix of friends and then friends of people I know), is that you can’t sit back and have a good laugh at someone.
Not a serious laugh mind you (we’re not talking judges on X Idol or something), but more of the sharing of the experience and understanding that this person is really bad!
Anyone who’s ever been to karaoke knows what I’m talking about.
With a room full of just people who know eachother there isn’t really any room for trodding on anyone’s toes or upsetting their feelings. What with the seriousness that some Taiwanese girls take KTV too – I’ve found that you’re better off just leaving this part of the night out altogether.
The end result?
A rather tame night out listening to people belt out overly dramatic love song after love song with little to zero social interaction beyond people you are already familiar with.
Unfortunately due to KTV’s popularity here and my willingness to mingle with the local population, I’ve been dragged to more KTV sessions than I’d have liked (one was enough for the experience alone).
Honestly, a little part of me always dies when I hear those words on a Saturday night…
‘so what are we doing tonight?’
‘oh I know – KTV!’
September 29th, 2010 at 11:21 am babylue2(Quote)
Oz, tell me something. Are you allowed to applause at these KTV sessions. I am a quiet girl by nature but, I do enjoy going out at least once a week and enjoying a decent evening after being a psychiatrist all week long.
I do love listening to to Karaoke and laughing my head off if the singer is bad. Not necessarily at them, just at how the fun of listening to a really bad singer. They know they are terrible and they also laugh and have fun. In the end everyone is cool and there is mad applause because it takes a lot of guts to go up there in the first place.
If serious cash has to be shelled out to attend these KTV sessions I think the patrons should gather at the chosen home of a friend and have a friend mingling time there. This sounds like some tight ass, stuffy, boring nonsensical thing to do in a public venue. Karaoke still rocks.
September 29th, 2010 at 6:55 pm Amando(Quote)
I disagree.
1. The notion that grown Taiwanese women ‘have the mindset of 12-year-olds’ is itself naive. I know Ph.D. candidates here who collect Hello Kitty. But I also know grown men from Australia who collect ‘Star Wars’ action figures. These fancies don’t make them children. It just makes them adults who collect cute stuff–who like to keep an element of whimsy in their lives.
But if we grant a certain ‘culture of shyness’, you have not at all shown how KTV perpetuates it. The assertion is illogical on the face of it, because KTV would be a healthy force for the contrary. It gives these otherwise ‘shy’ ‘face-saving’ people you describe a safe setting, among friends, to let their personalities come out and play.
2. You’re showing your own naivete here, I’m afraid. You think every country is like yours, where anyone can have a lounge room with a TV and put 6-8 people in it.
The metropolitan areas of Taiwan (and Japan, where this fad got started) are some of the most densely populated cities in the world. People don’t have big ‘lounge rooms’ at home that are conducive to hosting large parties. So yes, it is essentially ‘a rented lounge room’ but its existence hardly ‘boggles the mind.’ It makes perfect sense.
Especially when you consider that many people in their twenties still share their modestly-sized homes with family members. Privacy when dating is difficult to come by–unless some business in town is willing to cater to your need. Voila! KTV and MTV, like the hotels and spas that offer rooms by the hour rather than the day, fill this need. Any business in Taiwan or Japan that lets young adults have four hours of privacy in a comfortable room is not going to go broke. KTV represents is the perfect symbiotic relationship between entrepreneurs and young romantic couples. (And we’ve not even begun to consider those KTV places where one can rent one’s own companionship to go with the lounge.)
Odd that you overlooked these things. They are no secret. I guess you were too busy infantilizing the people you discuss–thinking of them as 12-year-olds–to consider the very adult factors contributing to the KTV phenomenon.
3. The music selection may be crap, but if hearing a drunken braggart bellow ‘My Way’ in a Western karaoke bar is the alternative you are championing, give me ‘Ting Hai’ sung by a Taiwanese lovely any day.
I agree that the English song selection can be paltry. But it’s a silly to complain that a country is foreign to you when this is exactly what a person of normal intelligence would expect before visiting one.
You overlooked the role that property rights and licensing fees play in the menu selection. It is very expensive to get current English-language hits onto a KTV menu in Taiwan. Only the most expensive KTV places will offer this. The rest have to forego Lady Gaga in favour of the Carpenters. That’s what they can afford.
You neglected to mention that KTV places actually do a fine job on the whole of offering a multilingual menu. You mentioned only English and ‘Chinese’ (meaning Mandarin). But one regularly finds song menus for Taiwanese, Hakka and Japanese as well as some Korean and Cantonese. Try finding a Western karaoke joint with that cosmopolitan of an outlook. You’ll be looking for a long time.
4. Nobody socialises? Well, that is not true of my visits to KTV places. One of the pluses of a night out in Taiwan compared to Western countries is the ratio of women to men. It’s a much healthier gender mix. Western bars are dominated by men. The prevalence of ‘sports bars’ in the West is testimony to this. So many men frequent bars without a woman to talk to that shrewd proprietors got the idea of surrounding them with TVs showing games. It’s a remedy for unrequited male mating instincts as old as adolescence itself: ‘Think about sports.’
Relatively few of the customers in Western bars, including karaoke bars, are women. Generally, a woman only appears in such a place if she (1) arrives on the arm of one of the male customers or (2) arrives with a group of friends who are all watching out for each other and carrying mace. Women don’t just show up the way men just show up.
Taiwan is a much more user-friendly society to women who just want to go out and have some fun. This shows in the number of women circulating. It makes a much more balanced and healthy gender mix that is very conducive to ‘socialising.’
Of course, we have to allow that the observer can skew the observations. When I go out in Taiwan, I don’t tell my Taiwanese friends how much more fun my country of origin is even in those dumps where everyone acts is binge-drinking and acting stupid, and I don’t talk to adult women with adult responsibilities as well as adult sex drives as if they were mental 12-year-olds. That might be helping me socially.
5. It’s true that in Taiwan humour tends to be more playful and teasing than in the West, where humour is more often biting and sarcastic. That’s very true. Few people in Taiwan would regard a night of ridicule at the expense of others as a night well spent. They are capable of it, but it’s negative energy they generally prefer not to indulge. If you would like to take your Taiwanese friends for on a walk on the wild side in that regard, the place to do it is not KTV. Take them to an MTV (movie) place and watch one of those ‘so-bad-they’re funny’ movies. It lets all the wicked laughter come out at the expense of Hollywood. Everyone will have fun.
One of the pluses of KTV is that in fact you are going out with friends. The participant is spared being made the butt of ridicule, no matter what happens at the microphone. This encourages people to come out and indulge themselves a bit and express themselves. (See Item 1.) Another plus is that you don’t have to share the party with individuals you respect so little that you would openly make them the butt of your open ridicule.
The company is the main thing. The music is the sound track for friendship. In this matter it is Western society that is arguably more repressed. Its competitive nature discourages the untrained from taking a chance, from having a go at something they may not be good at. Either you’re a consumer, listening to canned music that was recorded by someone else, or you’re on a professional track, worthy to aim for a record contract. Little place exists for the in-between variety of joyful amateur music-making, where people just get together and make music and enjoy the evening. Once it existed in Western sociey, in campfire sings and family gatherings at the piano. Some place still exists for it in community choirs and bands. But it has largely vanished as a feature of existence.
Taiwan still reserves a place for that. You can go out and enjoy good times with friends and make your music however you make it. And, to this observer, that’s a good thing.
September 30th, 2010 at 3:33 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
@babylue2
You can applaud but there’s not much point. You’re in a room with your friends… because it’s just you guys it’s not too long before you’re singing again. Applauding kinda gets tiring after a while.
KTV venues are open to the public but yeah, you wind up in a private hotel type lounge room of your own so there’s very little mingling.
I get that 99% of Taiwan still lives with their parents but KTV seems to be a bandaid compromise to the lack of personal independence that exists here.
Hearing ‘oh but my parents would never let me do that!’ by 20-30 year olds never ceases to amaze.
@Amando
Sorry mate but anyone who’s been around Taiwanese girls (I’m not talking about old married with kids Taiwanese women) should be able to relate to the 12 year old mindsets.
Adults who collect star wars figurines is definitely a minority in the west. Meanwhile collecting stupid 7-11 Doraemon figureines or hello kitty crap is a national past time in Taiwan.
The amount of girls bedrooms I’ve walked into and seen cutesy crap everywhere is definitely in the majority.
You mean the same personalities they have when they’re with their friends everywhere else?
Shyness in the sense that there’s still that feeling of panic if someone they don’t know approach them and start a conversation. Or having that independence to be comfortable talking to people they haven’t known their entire lives.
Karaoke is a great social experience and KTV removes a large part of that outside of a circle of pre-existing friends.
I’ve been into a lot of loungerooms and nearly everyone has a giant tv with ample space for karaoke. Bedrooms are small yes but loungerooms are usually the focal point of a house for socialising.
Neighbours might be an issue though.
I deliberately left out girlfriend KTV bars because personally I haven’t been into one. I’m not a ‘pay for you to talk to me’ kind of guy by nature and I’ve been told most places are all about the girls running up your beer tab with drinks.
Anything more then drinks and talk well… let’s just say I haven’t paid for it thus far and don’t ever intend to.
That’s why I left out companion bars, not because I was ignoring them.
Yeah so I had no idea what ting hai was. Fired up Youtube and straight away saw the obligatory romantic backdrop of waves.
Then came the piano…. then the violins…. fuck me this going to be yet another crappy bloody love song. Here’s the video for anyone interested;
This is the stupid crap you’ll probably have to listen to for hours if you go to karaoke with Taiwanese girls.
Yeah, except I’m not visiting and nor was I complaining. Stating the music was crap was more a refelction of the Asian music on offer. Whether it’s Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese or whatever… they’re all freaking overly dramatic love songs that sound the same and sorely grate on your nerves after the first few hours.
Oh please, like licensing matters here. And it’s interesting that you mention Lady Gaga. Every place I’ve been to has Lady Gaga available… she’s like a demigod over here.
Not much interest to me and while the song titles might be in English, the menu systems I’ve found are exclusively in Chinese… ie. I’ve got no idea what I’m doing.
…that’s what a DJ is for.
Kind of irrelevant when you’re sitting in a rented loungeroom. I’ll admit that when I go there’s usually more girls then guys in our group but if the rest of the rooms were full of girls – well they might as well be full of cleaning supplies cause they aren’t leaving their rooms.
What bars are you going out to?
Like here, back home if I did go it was usually because I was invited by a girl. Singing isn’t something Australian males get together to do to show off to eachother – it’s something you go to with girls.
Lol, yeah and Taiwan isn’t full of groups of girls who go out with no intention of talking to anyone but their friends. Most of the bars frequented by Taiwanese tend to be closed cliques of friends that sit down and don’t mingle. They’re more really resterants then bars in that sense.
I don’t even bother with groups of girls I don’t know as it’s usually a dead end. They’re not out to meet new people, they’re out to discuss the latest handbags or shoes.
No offense, but you come across as someone who fits right into the timid ‘where did my self confidence go?’ mental attitude that a lot of people have here. Referring to places of entertainment outside of Taiwan as dumps is kind of a giveaway.
Additionally, trying to lump me into the category of your typical ‘waah everything’s better at home’ visitor doesn’t really do you any favours either. As a writer I practice observation quite a bit and this means not interfering or proclaiming my country’s way of life is better all the time.
Socially I have no problems and at the end of the day KTV is just one small aspect of Taiwan’s night life I find utterly boring.
Again, you come across as someone who’s a bit insecure. I don’t know what karaoke experiences you’ve had back home but generally speaking people don’t take karaoke very seriously. If the person on stage is singing bad they usually know they’re singing bad and might even ham it up for the entertainment of others.
It’s not like you go along to a live interactive American Idol contest.
Anyway… I do appreciate the difference of opinion. Meanwhile KTV just simply isn’t for me; I’ll leave you to it with your PHD hello kitty collecting ‘women’.
October 4th, 2010 at 1:39 am Caffeinated SentryGnome(Quote)
so its like sing star but not at home. like spending a night in but out. the advantage of being at home with sing star is if you get bored of it before the girls do you just pretend to drink too much and go to bed. of course you can always just drink too much.
i agree it doesn’t sound like fun.
October 4th, 2010 at 4:07 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
Pretty much. Being out but not out gives it a pretty strong ‘we only go out if it’s strictly controlled’ environment feel.
Singing in public is fun but KTV kinda nullifies most aspects that make karaoke fun.
October 5th, 2010 at 12:19 am Andy(Quote)
For some reason I never really liked those Cashbox KTV’s. Sit in a quiet and dark room when I am not at room listening to people singing love songs because they are depressed or because it is raining outside.
I guess I am more of an outdoor type of person. I think I prefer nightclubs over KTV’s. I can see how women here would not agree as in clubs they get picked up on where in KTV’s they don’t.
May 31st, 2011 at 2:24 am Mark(Quote)
I was in Taiwan for quite a while and could kind of relate to what you wrote here… but then KTV started growing on me and I actually started wanting to learn more Chinese songs. I like a lot of them now, too. At this point I’ve come to enjoy KTV far more than bars.
Living in Beijing now, I’d love to have a “lounge room” as you put it for singing, but it’s just too loud for the neighbors to tolerate, especially at the hours my friends would be coming over to sing.
There are some karaokes in Taiwan with a mic for the bar, but they’re not nearly as popular as KTV and most of them are kind of seedy-looking. Once you get outside of the cities, though, there are a ton of “open” KTVs where you can sing with strangers in some roadside restaurant. That’s usually a lot of fun as long as you’re not self-conscious about your singing. Those places aren’t going to have much of anything in English, though. But hey, what’s the point of moving abroad if you’re just going to create a bubble around yourself, right? Learning Chinese is one of the best opportunities you’ve got living in Taiwan!
May 31st, 2011 at 2:26 am Mark(Quote)
Also, you might wanna check out some of 潘玮柏‘s rap, like 快乐崇拜. He is an ABC, though, to be fair.
May 31st, 2011 at 1:24 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Uh, are you talking about this song?
Mate with the hello kitty girl chorus (yeaaah!) and midi backing track, good luck singing that at a regular karaoke bar!
Doesn’t seem to bother the residents of Taiwan. Old people belting out terrible karaoke is actually on my list of article ideas. Just have to be in the right place at the right time to capture some video + audio from the street outside. I’m working on it though!
Is it really that though or is it because Taiwanese people are terrified of singing in public (and possibly receiving criticism… or worse, praise from stangers?).
I’ve been to regular bars that are pretty seedy looking (both Taiwanese and Expat orientated) and they seem just as popular as ever.
I agree but it’s a slow process. That and I doubt learning Chinese is going to make me fall in love with the music.
Seriously, I’ve heard enough freaking ‘wo aiiiiii niiiiii!’ chorus lines to last me a lifetime
!
June 19th, 2011 at 6:07 pm seanmarclee(Quote)
karaoke is first and foremost, about the people you go with. i’m chinese-american, born and raised in san francisco. i grew up with karaoke in the house as a regular thing.
the one thing i hate about bar karaoke, is listening to shitty singers and shitty songs. AND waiting forever for your turn. there’s no irony sometimes in the songs people pick, much less some people are just way to serious. i don’t know about you, but everytime i’ve thrown a KTV party, people socialize/make new friends/and have a chance to talk. I’ve KTV’d in the US, japan, taiwan… it all depends on who you go with.
http://vimeo.com/20281549
tell me that doesn’t look fun. my friends and i are not afraid, and we’re all big music fans.
June 20th, 2011 at 12:39 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Being a music fan has nothing to do with karaoke… well, unless you’re like some Taiwanese who take it way to seriously.
Yes, yes – because everyone is a shitty singer except for you and your friends. And the whole idea of other people singing is it gives you something else to do. Go play some pool, have a drink, chat to people. You can do that in KTV sure but you’re paying a premium for the equipment.
In a karaoke bar the karaoke is just a bonus.
And in a karaoke setting you’ve thus got a chance to enjoy the spectacle. Meanwhile in your closed door KTV all you can do is look around awkwardly as someone you know tries way, way too hard.
KTV’ing in Taiwan gets pretty old fast. You kind of have to talk as 99% of the songs are in Chinese and eventually listening to people sing the same trashy pop songs or drawn out love ballads you can’t understand gets annoying.
It’s easy to make anything look fun with some snapshots. I’m sure people do have fun with KTV, namely those who have grown up with it and need a ‘safe’ environment to sing infront of people.
For me a safe (and I don’t mean safe in a ‘dangerous’ context) environment for karaoke is utterly boring and predictable.
June 21st, 2011 at 12:56 am seanmarclee(Quote)
ok, let’s get this clear. i’m american, 99% of all my friends are american from all different backgrounds. i’ve done everything from stage karaoke, to KTV in taiwan/japan. i don’t understand how you can claim it’s not communal. when i go with my friends 20+ people, we get on stage on bars solo, even together, hell we even have a fucking dance party on stage and take it over. it’s always been about the communal experience for us. we’re an eclectic bunch of people singing everything from oldies/soul/rap/indie rock/cheesy pop songs for irony sake, to sometimes serious stuff we want to try out.
i believe it DEF helps if you know music, and LOVE music. i’m not talking about pop/love songs (though like i mentioned, it’s about irony.) i’ve never seen a ktv night “tame.” we’ve had people dress up, stand on tables, swing microphones, rock star it out. the stage is fun and all, but it’s not as communal. when a song comes, EVERYONE rocks out. it’s all about letting go.
my friend has even written a book about karaoke ranging from KTV in taiwan/japan, noraebangs (korean) to good ol’ american bar karaoke.
http://www.amazon.com/Hit-Your-Best-Shot-Domination/dp/0811861406
it is true, that A LOT of asians take it seriously, especially business men in japan, and “common folks.” for us, it was always about curating essentially a giant mix tape with your favorite songs, good and “bad.”
as for the socializing, i’ve introduced so many people to each other in KTV rooms, people who were afraid of singing saw how no one in my circle of friends gave a shit about embarrassing themselves, that it empowered them. comments ranging from “wow, i never really enjoyed karaoke, but seeing all you guys do it is so damn fun!” it’s not about singing “good” it’s about the show!
for the record, yes, english song selection sucks in the taiwan (no duh). however, in japan, they have ENTIRE albums by artists you will be hard pressed to find in the states by american bands in which sometimes if you are lucky, will find just one song.
obviously, i take this matter to heart as someone who loves karaoke.
ps, come to LA, we’ll take you to max karaoke. your own rooms AND BYOB. how’s that for saving money?
pps, one awesome thing about karaoke in asia, they play the real music videos.
June 22nd, 2011 at 2:03 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
@seanmarclee
I guess it’s less of who you go with then as opposed to the mindset. If you’ve got people with a western mindset I suppose it doesn’t particularly matter whether you KTV or karaoke or in which country you do it.
By and large in Taiwan at least it appears to be the night out of choice for people who take it way to seriously and denigrate the night into one dopey love ballad after another.
That and walking around the KTV joints you kind of get the sense most people are devoid of any personality and can’t wait to get back to their ‘safe space’ private rooms. God forbid anyone but they’re closest friends witness the slightest glimmer of any personality.
For Asian songs yes, but for English songs not only did they have the same unrelated crappy vids… but half the time the songs were in MIDI! Try singing to a midi backing track – it’s unbelievably tedious!
June 22nd, 2011 at 5:27 am seanmarclee(Quote)
finally we agree, while it’s largely true that a western mindset is usually less shy, i’ve seen both sides of the spectrum. i’ve friends in japan/taiwan completely rock it out and are definitely not the stereotype you make about them (it might help that most of my friends work in the entertainment/creative industries, so by nature we are a bit more eclectic).
i’ve also been to KTV in the west where people just sit on the sides (usually white folks who’ve never gone before). if they do sing, it’s a safe song without any spunk to it.
anyhow, too bad you haven’t had good experiences in KTV places.
i don’t blame you though, in a largely homogenous society such as taiwan and japan, you’re gonna get alot of “regular folks” singing the same old stuff.
the places i went in asia, usually had the full music videos for the english songs i sung… maybe it just really depended on where we went. (i always have friends who know the places with the best choices).
anyhow, rock on.