You will mostly be hired by some organization, club or event to hold the karaoke contest. So to those attending and participating, in their minds it will be your contest, even though it was the organizers doing. You will be held responsible for anything that goes wrong, for example a mix up in contestants or poor judging. It's your good name that is at stake here. Knowing this, ensure that you keep as much control as possible. Know exactly what the plans of the organizers are, and perhaps give them suggestions as to how to ensure that the contest runs smoothly and is successful.



To begin with determine with the organizers what categories do they want. Normally it will be best male, female and duet. Then if it's a family event you could go by age groups as well, meaning, children, youth and adults. Another alternative will be perhaps style of music such as rock, country and western rap or golden oldies. What is determined will be the amount of time being allotted for this karaoke contest and the number of contestants.

Judging is critical in these events. If people don't feel the judging is fair, the crowd and participants will become very disgruntled, and you are the one that's going to end up with the bad name. So you have two choices, you can bring 2 or 3 judges with you, or have the organizers provide them. It is preferable to have three judges. If the organizers are providing the judges make sure you review them first, if you are hesitant about any of them then do not use them, A biased judge could ruin the whole karaoke event. If the organizers are supplying the judges perhaps they could present you with 6 individuals and you could pick three from this.

You take control of the contest registration forms. Ideally you will want to have the music selection posted where their choice could be made right on the form. This will in the long run help things to move more quickly, and be more organized at the time of the karaoke contest. Be sure that contestants know they must print their name clearly ,so you will be able to call it out when its time. You basically can use two methods to use to keep the order of contestants. You can either go alphabetically, or you can put all the names in a hat and pull them out at random. This way you are not going to get any bickering of who goes when.

Depending on how many categories you are having ,will determine how many contestants you are going to allow. There must be a cut off date for registration as well. For the scoring system by the judges there are all kinds of things you could use to score the contestants on, but this is a fun evening so keep it simple. An ideal way to score is how difficult the song was to sing between 1-50 and how good the performance was 1-100. That's really what karaoke is all about.