Unreliable Wi-Fi adds stress to a busy show. A local library and your own request network give you a fallback.
What unreliable venue Wi-Fi means for your show
Bar Wi-Fi may be shared with the POS system, saturated by patrons, and often behind a captive portal that drops idle connections. Check what your software can do without internet before the show. Downloaded playback and phone requests may have different network requirements.
A three-part setup for unreliable Wi-Fi
Layer 1: Your library lives on your laptop. MP3+G/ZIP files on a local drive can't buffer. If you've invested years in a karaoke library, it works with zero bars of signal. (If your ZIPs are a mess of inconsistent volume levels, run them through a normalizer — Auto-KJ includes one on the Free version and the Full version.)
Layer 2: Requests over LAN, not internet. This is the piece most KJs don't know exists. Singers' phones don't need the internet to reach you — they need a network. A $30 travel router in your rig creates a local network; singers join it and browse your songbook and request from their phones, all without a single packet leaving the room. Auto-KJ's LAN mode does exactly this — the app runs a local server, singers connect from their phone browser.
Layer 3: Cloud when you have it, LAN when you don't. The ideal is software that uses the internet when it's there (GPS show finding, singers' own data plans) and falls back to LAN when it isn't — automatically, mid-show, without the rotation missing a beat.
The rig checklist
- Laptop with local library (SSD, not a USB spinning drive)
- Travel router (GL.iNet or similar) — your own network, always
- A visible sign or table cards: "Request from your phone: join AUTOKJ-WIFI"
- Software that treats offline as a feature, not a failure mode
What this costs
Auto-KJ Free version is $0 — desk-entered only, no singer phones — and handles manual queueing offline forever. Full version is ~$10/month for cloud singer phones with our full Social Engine, Break-Wave (dual-deck DJ mixer with beat/key matching automixing), full library management, LAN failover, kiosk, remote, and OpenKJ songbook hosting — one live show at a time, with extra simultaneous shows at +$5/mo. Pay once. Run up to four shows. Auto-KJ Lifetime is $500, one time. Everything in the full version, with up to 4 shows running at the same time. No monthly bill. Ghost-Trax credits are $2 each on the Free version and the Full version.
There is no separate "offline plan." LAN failover is part of the Full version. Cloud requests and GPS show finding work when the room has signal; the same show falls back to your travel router when it doesn't.
Keep your songs local, bring a request network you control, and test both before singers arrive.
The takeaway: bring your own network, keep your library local, and pick software built for both worlds.
Prepare your fallback before the first singer
Download the Free version for offline desk-entered shows, or try the Full version and watch LAN failover kick in when the bar Wi-Fi dies.