How do you get to Carnegie Hall? SingShot

When I try to sing to my two-week-old son, my wife says, "Don't do that." That's how bad my singing voice is. And that's why I fundamentally don't get karaoke and have no desire to participate in the new online karaoke community, SingShot.

For everybody else out there--people with either a better voice than I or no one to stop them--SingShot is an entertaining site where you can listen to other people cover popular songs, and if you're so inclined, join the party and belt out your own rendition for other people to hear.

SingShot competes with kSolo, an older karaoke site that's now owned by News Corporation's Fox Interactive, which also owns MySpace. Fox also broadcasts American Idol. Since the karaoke sites are community plays mixed in with talent scouting, it's pretty easy to imagine that kSolo could become a serious feeder site for American Idol.

Where will that leave SingShot? Obviously not everyone steps into a karaoke bar hoping, or even wanting, to be "discovered" by 100 million fickle television viewers, so there's plenty of room in the world for a smaller karaoke service. Also, SingShot has some advantages. It works with Firefox for one thing (kSolo doesn't, yet). And it costs less. While both services let you listen to recordings for free, you have to pay to post your songs on the services.

Both services have limited musical catalogs. SingShot CEO Ranah Edelin told me his service has about 2,500 tracks. Peter Cashmore complains that SingShot doesn't have enough modern tracks to attract a contemporary audience. My gripe is that the catalog barely has any old jazz standards. People who like rock and pop music should be happier.

See also Bix, a talent site that hasn't launched yet [TechCrunch write-up] but that looks to be focused on contests and using the wisdom of the crowds to discover the next big entertainment phenoms.