Pablo Retes is a 47-year-old police instructor in Nayarit, Mexico. Anne Hiscock, 44, is a Web site administrator half a world away in Tasmania. But on any given day, they may be crooning directly to each other--and to a worldwide cyber-karaoke audience of 50,000 would-be pop singers.
"When I sing an Elvis tune, the world's out there listening," says Retes, one of a growing number of karaoke fans letting loose on the Internet. "I never sing in bars. Just on the Web."
Adds Hiscock: "It's wonderful. You hear people singing from just about every country, in just about every language."
And she's right. On one recent day in their meeting place, PalTalk.com, a deep-voiced lounge lizard was belting out a version of Frank Sinatra's "My Way"--in Arabic.
Retes, Hiscock and their friends are taking advantage of improved technology and a communications revolution that has pumped up interest in karaoke--a lowbrow entertainment form that the music media regard with the same esteem that sports pages reserve for bowling and demolition derbies.
Born in Japan but now a staple in saloons, nightclubs, cruise ship lounges and dance halls around the world, karaoke machines give would-be stars a chance to sing with the band by playing background instrumentals to hit songs while the words flash on a TV screen in synchronization with the music.
In the past few years, hybrid compact discs and inexpensive players have brought karaoke out of the barroom and into the home--and from there to the World Wide Web.
Retes and Hiscock, for example, use a simple program called PalTalk that allows any singer with a computer and a microphone to broadcast over the Web. Using Internet telephony--a variety of real-time voice conferencing--karaoke singers can visit any PalTalk.com chat room and wait their turn and become digital rock-and-rollers.
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"It's a great outlet for anyone who's too shy to do karaoke in a bar," said Jason Katz, PalTalk's 37-year-old chief executive, who spoke with a reporter via microphone from a PalTalk.com chat room (but declined to sing).
"The great thing about the Web is that you're not limited to a couple of local karaoke clubs up the street from your house," he said. "The Internet is the best means of communication ever built, and it can be used for all kinds of mind-boggling applications."
