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Karaoke Machines With a CD Player (For Your Binder of Discs)
Karaoke discs use a format called CD+G, and most new machines can't play them, so if you own discs get a CD+G machine like the SML385 at about $70.
Gus Harmon · Updated July 8, 2026 · how I decide
If you buy through my links the site earns a little. It's never why I pick things.
Karaoke discs use a special format called CD+G, a normal CD with the lyrics hidden on it, and most new machines can’t play them because they have no disc drive at all. If you own discs, get a machine that says CD+G on the box, like the Singing Machine SML385 at about $70. If you don’t own discs, you don’t need a CD player. The songs come from apps now.
You’ve got a binder of karaoke discs, maybe from grandma’s Friday nights, maybe from a garage sale, maybe saved from a machine that finally died. You already own these songs and you don’t want to buy them all over again. Completely reasonable. Let me tell you exactly what to look for.
Here’s the thing that trips everybody up. Your karaoke discs aren’t quite regular CDs. They’re a format called CD+G, “CD plus Graphics,” which is a normal music CD with the lyrics tucked into a hidden part of the disc. A regular CD player will happily play the music and show you nothing. That’s why the discs seem “broken” on a new machine: the new machine can read the music but not the lyrics, and most new machines have no disc slot at all.
Back in the 1980s, engineers found there was a little unused space riding alongside the music on every CD, a set of spare channels called subcode. On a karaoke disc, they stuffed the scrolling lyrics into that spare space. So the words were always hiding right there next to the song since 1985, invisible unless the machine knows to go looking for them. A CD+G machine is really just a normal CD player that also reads that secret side channel and paints it on a screen.
The market moved, not your family
Most machines being sold today dropped the disc drive entirely, because for everyone else the songs come from apps now. But the CD+G machines didn’t vanish. They’re a small, cheap, stable corner of the market, and they do this one job well.
The one most people land on is the Singing Machine SML385, about sixty to a hundred dollars. It’s a bridge machine: it plays the old binder AND connects to your phone over Bluetooth, and it even records to USB. So you’re not choosing between grandma’s discs and modern songs, you get both. There’s also the Karaoke USA all-in-one class, which has crept up to around $160 to $230, if you want discs and DVDs.
Two traps to sidestep. Listings that say “CD player” but mean audio-CD only, no lyrics, no CD+G. And paying two hundred dollars or more for a disc drive when about seventy buys the machine everyone uses.
One more path people ask about: ripping the whole binder to USB so any modern machine can play it. It exists, and for a big collection it is a project, not an afternoon. In one thread, an owner with over 1,500 songs found his machine’s built-in ripper took about 80 minutes per disc and left every file unnamed, which he figured put him weeks away from a sorted library. If the binder is a shoebox, rip it. If it’s a bookcase, buy the $70 machine that just plays the discs.
The honest fork
If the discs are the whole point, get the CD+G machine and enjoy the binder. That’s a real, good reason.
But if the discs are more incidental, and you’d be just as happy with the songs some other way, I’ll gently tell you the truth: nearly everything in that binder is on YouTube and the karaoke apps too. In that case, skip the disc drive and put the money into a better speaker. No wrong answer here, it just depends on whether it’s the discs you love or the songs.
Discs you love: the SML385, about seventy bucks, plays the binder and your phone both. Done. No real attachment to the discs? Skip the CD player entirely, and that money buys you a better-sounding speaker.
If you buy through my links the site earns a little coffee money. Doesn’t change the price, doesn’t change my answer.
If you’re figuring this out, you’re probably also wondering:
Gus Harmon
Gus spent three decades running sound wherever somebody needed it: bar bands, weddings, school shows, and twelve years of Sunday mornings. He can't sing a note. He can make sure you're heard. Now he writes so normal people can buy the right thing the first time.