Overview
Your TV is the stage. Everybody’s phone is the remote. Nobody installs anything.
KaraokeArcade runs the whole night from a browser. Guests scan a QR code, search your library, queue a song and watch their place in line from the couch. You self-host it on a laptop, a Mac mini, a Raspberry Pi or a NAS - no accounts to make, no subscription, no ads, nothing phoning home.
App in mobile browser (top) controlling player in desktop browser (bottom)
One queue, three kinds of turn
There is one rotation and everything takes its turn in it. A trivia round and a singer battle sit in the queue exactly like a song does - they come round when they come round, and each costs a turn.
Trivia and battles are off until a host turns them on for a room, so a night that is only songs is only songs.
Karaoke
The part everybody came for. See the app for how each screen works.
- Queue from the couch. Search by artist or song, star the ones you want later, tap once to get in line.
- Know when you’re up. A strip at the top of every screen counts down to your turn.
- Step away. Hit pause and the rotation skips you until you’re back - your songs keep their place.
- Your list is yours. Drag your own upcoming songs into the order you want on the Me tab. The rotation between singers stays automatic.
- Sing it in your key. Shift a song up or down six semitones without changing its tempo, and it remembers next time.
- A moment between songs. A short intermission names and shows the next singer, so nobody’s left hunting for the mic.
Trivia
Music trivia that takes the gap between two singers, so the room has something to do - and the guests who would rather not sing get a way to play. See Trivia.
- A round waits in the queue like a singer does, and comes up about once per lap.
- Five questions, big on the TV, four coloured keys on every phone in the room.
- Anyone can play, whether or not they have a song queued. One answer each, first tap counts.
- The right answer goes up for everyone at once, then the scoreboard, then the next singer is on.
- Questions come from the Open Trivia Database and are cached ahead of time, so a party in a basement with no internet still plays.
Singer Battle
One turn, two singers, and each of them picks the other’s song. It runs on the TV as an arcade cabinet: fighters, a VS slam, two-minute rounds and a verdict. See Battle.
- Pick who you sing as. Eight fighters; whoever you choose is who the room watches on stage.
- Throw a challenge. Pick somebody in the room, then pick the song they have to sing. Their phone gets 45 seconds to accept - and the song they pick back is the one you sing. Neither of you sees the other’s choice until it’s on screen.
- Two minutes each, so a whole battle is about five minutes of the night and costs one place in the queue, not two.
- The room decides. Everybody votes on their own phone - one vote each, anonymous, and nobody sees the count until the verdict. Hosts who would rather have it loud can switch the room to crowd-noise scoring instead.
Create your own fighters with CharacterAssetGenerator.
Good to know
- Nothing to install for guests - it’s a web app; joining is a QR code and a name.
- Guests welcome. Let people in with an account, a new sign-up or as a guest, room by room.
- More than one room. Each has its own queue and can be password-protected.
- Your library stays yours. Point it at your folders; it scans MP3+G (including zipped) and MP4.
- Music-synced visualizations. A WebGL visualizer runs behind the lyrics for MP3+G, and behind MP4 when video background keying is switched on for that folder - the key colour is detected for you.
- No ads, no telemetry, no cloud account. Self-hosted, and ISC-licensed.
Microphones are not required since the player itself only outputs music - this allows your audio setup to be as simple or complex as you like. See the F.A.Q. for more information.
How KaraokeArcade compares
KaraokeArcade is a fork of Karaoke Eternal, and tracks it for the media, scanning and server side. Where it differs is what the night feels like for the people in the room.
| KaraokeArcade | Karaoke Eternal | |
|---|---|---|
| Queue from your phone | Yes | Yes |
| MP3+G, MP4, visualizer | Yes | Yes |
| QR-code joining, guest accounts | Yes | Yes |
| Fair round-robin rotation | Yes | Yes |
| Reorder your own songs | Drag them on your Me tab | Host only |
| See how long until your turn | Counts down in the header | Guess from the list |
| Step away without losing your spot | Pause and resume | Remove and re-queue |
| Between songs | Intermission names the next singer | Songs run back-to-back |
| Music trivia rounds | Built in, takes its own turn | — |
| Head-to-head singer battles | Built in, with fighters and a room vote | — |
| Make your own fighters | A written brief becomes sprite sheets, via an AI pipeline | — |
| What you’ve sung | Kept per singer, across parties | — |
| Change key | ±6 semitones, same tempo, remembered next time you queue it | — |
| Look and feel | DECK — dark, mixing-desk | The original Karaoke Eternal UI |
| Self-hosted, ad-free, no telemetry | Yes | Yes |
Both are free and ISC-licensed. If you want the original’s simplicity, it’s an excellent piece of software and you should use it.
Getting Started
KaraokeArcade has three parts. See Getting Started to get up and running step-by-step, or jump to the documentation for each part below:
- Server: Runs on a Windows PC, a Mac, a Raspberry Pi or a NAS, and serves both the app and your media files.
- App: Fast, modern mobile web app designed for “karaoke conditions”.
- Player: Just another part of the app, but meant to run fullscreen on the system handling audio/video for a room.
Installation
There are several installation methods available for KaraokeArcade Server.
Discord & Support
For bugs and requests specific to KaraokeArcade, open an issue. For general karaoke-system support and development chat, there’s the Karaoke Eternal Discord Server, home of the project KaraokeArcade is forked from.
Contributing & Development
Contributions are welcome - please open an issue before starting on anything major, since the project’s scope is deliberately narrow.
You’ll need Node.js v24 or later and Bun v1.2 or later:
- Fork and clone the repo
bun installnpm run dev, then look for “Web server running at” for the server URL
Other useful scripts: npm test (vitest), npm run lint, npm run typecheck, and npm run build followed by npm run serve for a production run.
Acknowledgements
- Karaoke Eternal by RadRoot LLC: the project KaraokeArcade is forked from, used under the ISC license
- David Zukowski: react-redux-starter-kit, which that project began as a fork of (all contributors up until it was detached to its own project are listed on the Contributors page)
- Luke Tucker: the original JavaScript CD+Graphics implementation
- Open Trivia Database: the trivia questions, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0