Cheerly: A Love Letter to Karaoke Night
If you know me, you know I love karaoke. Not casually — I mean I'll actively plan my week around which night and venue has karaoke. Since January I've been doing this, at a lot of spots in Nairobi and beyond that run karaoke nights.
And in all that time, I kept running into the same problems, over and over, at almost every venue. Not because the hosts weren't trying — some of the best hosts I know hit these walls, because they're doing it all with paper and memory.
Here's the thing — every problem I've hit as a guest is also a problem for whoever's running the show. Same night, same mess, felt from both ends of the mic.
The Nights We Know
The paper request that vanishes. You write your song down, hand it to a waiter because the host is busy, and then... you just don't know if it made it. Sometimes it did. Sometimes it stayed in the waiter's pocket. And you're still there, waiting for your turn. Meanwhile the host has no idea a request even exists until — if — it physically arrives.
The request that never gets made. Not everyone wants to walk up and hand the host a slip in front of the room — especially first-timers. So some just don't request at all, and that's a guest who wanted to sing and didn't. The host never even knows they lost a singer.
The mixed-up stack. The host is holding twenty paper slips and running a room at the same time. Of course they get shuffled. It's not on them — it's an impossible job with paper. Some hosts even go around collecting requests on their own phone's notepad.
The missed turn. This has happened to me. You step out for two minutes, and that's exactly when your name gets called — now the host has to decide whether to skip you or hold the room. Either way its about a minute or 2 of empty air killing the vibe.
The uneven turns. Someone gets three turns while you're still waiting on your first. There's no record of who's sung and who hasn't. The host isn't playing favorites — they're multitasking sound, the room, and a stack of paper, and something was always going to slip.
The rigged-feeling competition. "Loudest cheer wins" sounds fun until you're the one who got genuinely cheered hard and still lost because someone's friend group yelled louder. You leave feeling cheated. And what if you have no friendgroup? — The host now has to defend a result they can't actually prove.
Nothing to show for the night. You crush it on stage, you're cheered to the moon and back... You can't brag about it though, because unless someone was recording you, its just a memory in your head!
A Cheerful Solution
After enough nights like this, I stopped just noticing it and started building the solution. This is Cheerly.
No paper, no waiter, no walking up to anyone. Guests scan a code on the screen, key in their names and phone numbers and they're in. They can search up and queue their own song from their phone. Hosts get a live, accurate queue they didn't have to build by hand — no slips, no notepad, no guessing what's coming next.
A queue that enforces itself. Nobody "accidentally" gets three turns while someone else waits on their first — for the guest, that's fairness. For the host, that's one less thing they have to actively police while running everything else.
A notification ping when you're up next. Guests stop losing turns to bathroom breaks. Hosts stop having to make the awkward call of whether to skip someone who just stepped away.
Real cheers, real leaderboard. Every guest gets 10 cheers to hand out a night, tallied transparently, ranked most to least. For guests, that's a result nobody can argue with. For hosts, that's a competition night that ends clean — no post-show disputes to referee.
Something to actually show for it, on both ends. Guests walk away with a record of their night — cheers, leaderboard spot, something screenshot-worthy instead of a memory nobody else was there for. Hosts get the same at the venue level: an actual picture of how the night went, guests they can invite back, proof of a good night instead of just the memory of running one.
And it doesn't have to end when the night does. Claim your profile, and Cheerly keeps the streak going — every cheer, every song, every leaderboard finish, at every venue running Cheerly, not just tonight's. Your best night on stage stops disappearing the moment the last chord fades; it just becomes the next entry in a running total. Hosts get the same thing, from the other side of the mic — total nights run, guests served, your single best night, following you across every venue you host, not just this one. And since Cheerly allows hosts to also participate in their own parties, a host who also loves to sing gets both stacking on the same profile — your record as the one running the show, and your record as the one who occasionally steals the mic.
Conclusion
I built this because I love this scene enough to want it to actually work — for the guests trying to get their turn, and for the hosts trying to run a fun night.
If you host karaoke and any of this sounded familiar, DM me. And if you're a guest who's lived through any of these — which one hit closest to home?
