Song Theme Engine by DJWS - The Origin Story
🎤 THE ORIGIN STORY: Why I Built a Song Theme Engine
I didn’t build a song theme engine because themes are cute. I built it because of a night at Rude Dog when a singer walked up to me, glowing, and said:
“Thank you for making me sing something I never would’ve picked on my own.”
That was the moment. Not the night someone nailed a high note. Not the night the room was packed. The night someone felt brave, surprised, and seen because a theme nudged them out of their comfort zone.
That’s when I realized: Themes aren’t decoration. Themes are infrastructure.
** See the Song Theme Engine here! **
🎛️ Before I Built Anything, I Was Just a Guy Going to Karaoke
Back in the early 2010s, I went to a lot of karaoke gigs. And I noticed something most people never say out loud:
A karaoke night is shaped as much by the host as by the singers.
Not just the equipment. Not just the catalog. Not just the rotation.
It’s the way the host:
- Welcomes people
- Runs the list
- Keeps the energy moving
- Makes singers feel appreciated
- Builds a room where strangers root for each other
That realization is what made me become a KJ.
I already had DJ experience, band experience, soundboard experience; I knew how to run a room. So I bought decent gear, then upgraded piece by piece until I had a genuinely high-end setup. But equipment is only half the job.
The other half is hosting.
I introduced every singer. I thanked them. I shouted them out afterward. I kept the list tight and fair. I minimized downtime. I avoided unnecessary bumper music. I did everything I admired in other great KJs, and I pushed it further.
But eventually I hit a ceiling.
What else could I do to make the night better?
🎯 The Answer Was Themes; Long Before I Had a Database
I started running theme rounds:
- Songs with “baby” in the title
- Artists with a color in their name
- Songs with a body of water
- Songs with be‑verbs
- Songs with cities
- Songs with numbers
Sometimes it was just for fun. Sometimes I gave out raffle tickets, a free drink, a T-shirt, vendor swag; tiny prizes, but the anticipation was the real reward.
And something fascinating happened:
Singers kept coming up to me to say:
“I never sing anything new, but this theme made me try something different.”
Themes broke people out of their rut. Themes gave shy singers a social alibi, a psychological permission slip. Themes turned a room full of individuals into a room full of participants in the same game.
And themes created community in a way normal karaoke doesn’t.
When someone picks a theme song, they’re revealing something about themselves:
- Their taste
- Their mood
- Their bravery
- Their sense of humor
- Their emotional state that night
It’s not the same rotation song you’ve heard them do for 18 months. It’s the one song on that list they felt bold enough to try tonight.
That creates connection. That creates story. That creates memory.
Themes aren’t cute. Themes are crowd control, community building, and emotional engineering.
📚 The First Theme Lists Were… Extremely Manual
Before I had a system, I built theme lists like this:
- Search my DJ software
- Tag songs with codes
- Export the list
- Drop it into Excel
- Apply a colored template
- Print it
- Slide it into a sheet protector
- Put it in a binder
I could also take a chart output from Excel and oost it on social media.
It worked, but it didn’t scale. And it definitely didn’t work well on phones.
I tried Airtable. I tried Notion. I tried embedding pages on my website. I tried every database tool under the sun.
They all had the same problem:
They felt like databases. Not like something a singer could browse comfortably at a bar.
💡 The Breakthrough: Turning My Store Platform Into a Theme Engine
I looked at the architecture powering Minty Tees and realized: a product catalog is just a database. And databases can be repurposed.
That was the breakthrough. Suddenly, this didn’t have to feel like a spreadsheet, a wiki, or a clunky database. It could feel like a real karaoke browser.
Something singers could use on their phones. Something KJs could use to run theme nights. Something that finally felt built for the room.
🧩 The Feature Explosion
Once I started building, the database logic took over. Piece by piece, I hard‑coded the missing infrastructure:
- Cover-Version Mapping: originals ↔ covers
- Disambiguation: handling songs with identical titles
- Deep interconnected indexes
- Artists ↔ Songs ↔ Themes ↔ Hometowns
- The Show KJ Button: built specifically for the person running the board
- Theme Pages: curated editorial pages, not filters
- The Theme Index: browseable, sortable, filterable
- The Artist Index: A–Z with song counts
- The Song Index: the full catalog
- Hometown Collections: music tied to cities and regions
- Related Artists: discovery through connection
Piece by piece, it evolved from:
“my personal theme lists,” then “a public karaoke resource,” then “a full navigation system inside Minty Tees.”
🧠 The Fourth Layer: What Karaoke Has Always Been Missing
Karaoke has always had:
- Singers
- Songs
- Hosts
But it’s always been missing the fourth layer:
4. Themes: the emotional, communal, psychological layer that ties the night together
Themes scale emotion. Themes scale discovery. Themes scale participation. Themes scale community.
Themes are the missing infrastructure karaoke never built.
So I built it.
🚀 Why I’m Sharing This Now
I built this for:
- Singers who want to discover new songs
- KJs who want to run better nights
- Venues who want more engaged crowds
- Anyone who loves music and wants a smarter way to explore it
This is the beginning of the series. Over the next several weeks I’m going to walk through every feature, one at a time, and explain why I built it and how to use it.
You can use it today, right now, at mintytees.com, no account required.
If you’re a singer, a KJ, a venue, or just a music nerd, I hope you’ll follow along.
Because this isn’t just a database. It’s a philosophy of hosting. It’s a community engine. It’s a way to turn a room full of strangers into a room full of participants.
And it all started with one singer saying:
“Thank you for making me sing something I never would’ve picked on my own.”
Over the next several weeks I’m going to walk through every feature, one at a time, and explain why I built it and how to use it.