What You Need to Create a Karaoke Video with Croonify

To make a karaoke video with Croonify, you need three things: a song file that contains vocals, the song's title and artist name, and the full lyrics pasted as text. The song file can be audio or video (.mp3, .m4a, .mp4, and similar formats). The most important condition is that the recording must include someone singing — Croonify uses the vocal track to synchronize the lyrics, so an instrumental-only file will not work.

The three inputs Croonify asks for

Croonify's workflow is built around three steps, each matching one required input.

1. Select Song File (vocals required)

Upload the recording you want to turn into karaoke. Accepted media includes audio and video files such as .mp3, .m4a, and .mp4. You can browse your device or use the media picker.

The key constraint: the file must contain singing. Croonify states plainly that there must be vocals for the lyrics to synchronize, and that it "will NOT do what you want otherwise." If you upload an instrumental, the tool will tell you the recording doesn't appear to have anyone singing and ask whether you want to choose another recording.

2. Add Title & Artist

Enter the song title and the artist name. There's a search field linked to AZLyrics, which you can use to look up the track. This metadata labels the finished video, so it's worth getting right rather than leaving it blank.

3. Paste Lyrics

Paste the complete lyrics as text. One detail people commonly get wrong: include repeated lines and choruses every time they occur. If a chorus repeats three times in the song, it should appear three times in the pasted lyrics so the synchronization lines up with the audio.

What you don't need

• No karaoke-specific or instrumental version of the song — that's the problem Croonify is designed to solve. If you can't find a karaoke version, you make one from the original.
• No manual timing or subtitle editing described in the workflow — you supply the text, and Croonify handles synchronization.

Quick checklist before you start

Common sticking points

• Uploading an instrumental. This is the most likely failure. If Croonify says it can't detect singing, swap in a version with vocals.
• Trimming repeated lyrics. Leaving out repeated choruses breaks synchronization, since the tool matches the text against what it hears across the whole track.
• Sourcing the song. The page notes that the iTunes Music Store still works well for downloading DRM-free licensed music, which is one way to get a file you can upload.

Once all three inputs are in place, Croonify produces a synchronized karaoke video — the intended uses are parties, events, and similar settings where you want lyrics on screen without hunting down an official karaoke track.