To do karaoke at home you need three things: a backing track (the song with the singer removed), the lyrics on a screen, and a speaker and microphone loud enough to sing over. A phone and a Bluetooth speaker are enough to start. If the song you want has no karaoke version, the Karaoke Maker can turn the original into a backing track in a minute or two.
This guide is about the home setup. If you want to know how a machine in a bar works inside, see our piece on how karaoke machines work.
Here is the short list:
If you plug a mic straight into a speaker, you hear only the mic and the music from the speaker, with no way to blend them. A small mixer or a speaker with separate mic and music volume knobs fixes that.
Video sites and karaoke apps have thousands of sing-along videos with the words on screen. This is the quickest route for popular songs. Quality varies, and some are played in a different key or arrangement from the original.
When the version you want is not out there, you can make it. Upload the song to the Karaoke Maker, press the big orange button, and you get two files: Instrumental and Vocals only. The Instrumental reel is your backing track, saved as an MP3 at 320 kbps. The Vocals only reel is the original singer, which is handy for learning the tune.
New accounts get 5 free credits when they sign in with Google, with no card. Most tools cost 1 credit per minute of song, so a 4 minute song is about $0.30 once you buy a pack, and the price shows on the button before you start. Uploads can be MP3, WAV, M4A or FLAC, up to 10 minutes. The splitting runs in the cloud, so there is nothing to install.
You can also work in an audio editor. The old trick is phase cancellation: flip one stereo channel upside down and add it to the other, so anything mixed to the center cancels out. It only works when the lead vocal sits dead center and everything else does not, and it usually leaves a thin, hollow sound. The Vocal Remover uses a separation model instead, which handles most modern songs better.
The tool removes all the vocals, backing vocals included. That means "oohs" and harmonies behind a chorus are gone too. If you want to keep the backing singers and drop only the lead, the Separate Lead and Backing Vocals page gives you the lead on its own.
Songs with a strong beat separate most cleanly. Live recordings and songs with heavy reverb can leave faint traces of the singer, mostly in quiet moments. Play the quietest part through the speaker you will use on the night, since a party speaker shows more than headphones do.
A karaoke video is the backing track with the lyrics appearing at the right moment. You can make one yourself.
Our tool makes the audio only. It does not show or sync lyrics, and it does not accept video files, so you do the lyrics step in your editor.
Singing along to a track in your living room is private use. Posting a karaoke video online, or using one in a business, is different. A published video usually involves the lyrics, the song itself and the original recording, and each can have its own owner. Public performance in a bar or shop may need a licence too. If you plan to share your videos, check the rules of the platform and the owners of the music first.
Yes. A phone or laptop, a speaker and any microphone will do. Play a backing track, show the lyrics on a screen, and sing.
Upload the song to the Karaoke Maker and download the Instrumental file. New accounts get 5 free credits, enough for a song up to 5 minutes.
Not with the Karaoke Maker, since it removes all the vocals. Use the Separate Lead and Backing Vocals page to take out just the lead.
Use a video editor or slideshow program. Place each line of lyrics so it appears just before the singer would start it, then export the video with the instrumental under it.
Making one for yourself is fine. Sharing it publicly can need permission from the owners of the lyrics, the song and the recording.