Lost Souls Karaoke: Creating a powerful brand with Singa

Welcome to Lost Souls Karaoke Bar, an underworld-themed karaoke venue in Fortitude Valley, Australia, offering a theme park-level experience that transports guests into karaoke purgatory. Connected to Netherworld, an arcade and bar, many customers visit both in one night.

Reflecting a DIY ethos and love for Brisbane, the owners designed and built much of Lost Souls themselves, from room designs to wall painting, ensuring a more personalized, unique experience. Involving staff in the process added to the venue’s creativity and fun atmosphere.

Lost Souls Karaoke bar has 5 karaoke rooms with a common area in the middle. Each room has a different design and creatures that represent the room. All done by an artist named Nelson Gibbins who also designed a lot of their Netherworld designs.

To attract potential customers, 3 out of the 5 karaoke rooms at Lost Souls have street-facing windows, allowing passersby to see the colorful rooms and the fun inside. The venue chose not to serve food in the rooms, based on past kitchen experience and the potential mess, but customers can enjoy food next door at Netherworld or in the common area at Lost Souls. While QR codes and digital menus were considered, they opted for a full bar service outside the room, with staff quickly delivering drinks to the rooms. Alcohol sales are the venue's primary source of revenue.

They attract a diverse crowd of  typically between 25 to 45 years-old, with most visiting on Friday and Saturday nights, particularly from 7 PM to midnight. Saturdays are consistently fully booked.

About 75% of karaoke bookings are pre-booked, with 25% as walk-ins. Popular for birthday and bachelor/bachelorette parties, they recently hosted four consecutive bachelorette groups. Rooms accommodate up to 8 or 15 people, priced between AU$100-150, with half-price rates on weekdays. The rooms’ pricing model encourages larger groups and affordability.

Karaoke was a natural choice for Lost Souls, as they had been running karaoke nights in Netherworld.

The karaoke rooms have been a success from the start of their business. The karaoke model has brought a different dynamic to their business bringing in customers throughout the week compared to their arcade location, which is primarily focused on weekends.

Having both Netherworld and Lost Souls next to each other provided an outlet for their creativity and also drove more traffic to and from Netherworld. The key points behind their success include being community-minded, committing to the theme, and constantly learning and improving the venue.

Lost Souls chose Singa Karaoke to upgrade to more modern software, aiming to impress customers with a diverse song list, high hit rate, and customizable app features tailored to their venue. From the start, they were impressed by Singa's user-friendly interface and flexibility in customization. The features that stood out most were the box mode and playlist options.

They were particularly impressed by the co-branding feature which allows venues to match the Singa interface with their personal branding by changing background images as well as some custom messaging options. The co-branding allowed for Lost Souls to tell a complete story in all aspects of their room, by incorporating the visuals of their villains into the karaoke backgrounds.

Future plans include offering themed events and further developing the designs and concepts of their rooms.They already have a handful of companies renting out the whole venue for events and are looking to expand upon this with additional event and corporate bookings.