StarMaker: Sing Karaoke Songs

Review by eFreeware

If you enjoy singing along to songs and want somewhere to do it that feels more like a stage than a private hobby, StarMaker is built for exactly that. It is a karaoke app and music community from SKYWORK AI PTE. LTD. that has been on Google Play since November 2013 and has passed 500 million installs, with a 4.3 average from roughly 3.9 million ratings. The developer describes a global user base of more than 50 million people.

What you get is a catalog of millions of songs, local and international, with rolling lyrics and backing tracks to sing over. From there the app pushes toward sharing and collaboration: duets with artists or friends, group singing, themed rooms and a community layer that lets you find people with similar taste. It is free to install and supported by ads and in-app purchases.

That combination makes it a good fit for people who like the idea of singing as a social activity, not just a solitary one. If you mainly want a quiet place to practice scales or work through a song on your own, the social and performance elements here are the whole point of the app, and that is worth understanding before you commit time to it.

Recording a song and shaping how it sounds

The core loop is straightforward: pick a track from the catalog, sing along with the lyrics on screen, and edit the result. The developer says the backing music is high quality, and the lyrics scroll as you go so you are not guessing where you are in the song. Once a take is recorded, the audio editor is where most of the shaping happens.

Effects include Distant, Warm, Vinyl, Party and Fascinating, which let you push a recording toward a specific mood rather than leaving it dry. There is also pitch correction, which is the feature I would expect most people to reach for first, since it can smooth out a performance and make an amateur take sound more polished. The developer pitches this as a way to sound like a professional singer, which is the kind of claim worth taking as an intention rather than a guarantee.

For video, the app offers filters such as Vintage, Paris, Sunset, Urban and Spring, plus templates for building a music video with lyrics displayed in a more decorative style. The result can then be shared to social platforms including WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. The Hook feature is a smaller-scale option: instead of recording a whole song, you sing the best-known part and can build a duet with an artist or a friend.

Singing with other people, in rooms and duets

The social side is where StarMaker separates itself from a plain karaoke player. You can create rooms and sing or play inside them, and the app includes sing games as part of that room experience. The app also shows who stands out as the best player or the strongest singer in a room, which turns a session into something closer to a friendly competition.

Duets are handled in a couple of ways. You can pair with well-known artists on their tracks, or sing together with friends and produce a joint recording. Families are another layer: joining one puts you in a group of people who share your musical tastes, which is a way to keep singing with the same crowd instead of starting from scratch each time.

There is also a listening side. You can look through popular covers by other users and save music for later. Taken together, these features suggest an app that rewards participation. The more you sing, post and join in, the more there is to come back to, while someone who only wants to record privately will see a smaller slice of what is on offer.

What you need before your first take

StarMaker asks for a set of optional permissions, and you can still use the app if you decline them, though some features may not work properly without them. The microphone permission covers singing, recording, playback, party rooms and live streams. Saving photos and videos from the app to your device is what storage access covers.

Several permissions relate to the social and organizational side. Contacts access is for adding friends, and photos and media access lets the app reach your gallery and handle photos and video. Location is used for location-based services such as suggesting friends nearby, calendar access adds activity reminders, and Bluetooth connects wireless audio devices for recording and playback.

The practical takeaway is that a microphone and a quiet space are the basics, and the rest of the permissions map to features you may or may not use. If you want the full room and duet experience, granting the relevant permissions is what makes those parts work as intended.

The kind of singer this suits

This is a natural fit for someone who already sings for fun and wants an audience, even a small one. The catalog spans pop, hip hop, R&B and folk, and the current song list includes tracks such as Die With A Smile by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars, BIRDS OF A FEATHER by Billie Eilish, APT. by ROSÉ and Bruno Mars, and Ordinary by Alex Warren, so there is a reasonable chance the songs you actually want to sing are in there.

It also suits people who enjoy the collaborative angle more than the solitary one: duetting with a friend, joining a Family, or dropping into a room to sing with strangers who like the same music. The editing tools add appeal if you care about how a recording sounds and looks before you post it, rather than just capturing a raw take.

The trade-offs are the ones that come with a free, ad-supported app with in-app purchases, and with a product this heavily oriented toward community and performance. Someone who wants a stripped-down tool for practicing a song in private will find a lot here that is not aimed at them. The app has been updated recently, in September 2026, which suggests it is still being actively developed rather than left as-is.

A karaoke app for people who want company

StarMaker works best as a social singing app rather than a private practice room. The song catalog, the audio and video editing tools, the duets, the rooms and the Family groups all point in the same direction: singing as something you do with and for other people. If that sounds appealing, the free download makes it easy to try a song and see how the editing and sharing side feels.

If you are drawn mainly by the pitch correction, effects and video templates, those are strong reasons on their own, and the collaboration features are there if you want them. If you would rather sing without an audience, keep in mind that ads and in-app purchases are part of the package and that the app is built around participation.

For anyone who has wanted a place to sing the songs they already love, with tools to polish the result and people to share it with, this is a reasonable place to start. The scale of the install base and the steady rating suggest plenty of people have found that combination worthwhile.