TREND ENTERTAINMENT TECH : WORLD

BECAUSE the web wanted it, a couple turns their house into a karaoke club.

It was another typical Friday night in the Brooklyn borough of New York as middle-aged husband and wife, tired from the workweek, settled into their domestic routine.

''Mic check, one, two,'' Roberto Williams said from his office, while Zaida Soler-Williams cleared a refrigerator shelf in the kitchen and arranged microphones on a coffee table in the living room.

A fireplace with lapping flames played on an oversize screen while two disco balls slowly rotated.

Soon, their home would be full of strangers belting out ''Bohemian Rhapsody'' and ''Drops of Jupiter.''

As the proprietors and residents of Lions Roar Karaoke House, Mr. Williams, 52, and Mrs. Soler-Williams, 47, have hosted up to 30 singers and carousers at a time in their living room almost every weekend for four years.

They didn't mean to start a karaoke club in their house. It kind of a just happened.

In 2012, the couple was lounging in bed, watching television, when they received a random phone call ''from someone who said that that he was with 10 other people and he would like to come over for karaoke,'' Mr. Williams recalled.

''I said, ''I'm sorry but you're calling my house.''

The caller had stumbled across an old website for Lion's Roar Entertainment, a mobile for-hire karaoke and D.J. business that the couple closed in 2008 - save for a rare gig here and there - to focus on their other careers.

Ms. Williams was a vocal music teacher and Mrs. Soler-Williams a television post-production supervisor.

But by the following weekend, more people were calling to sing karaoke at their house.

''I don't know what that one guy did, but he bumped Lions Roar Karaoke to the very top of the  search engine somehow,'' Mr. Williams said.

''It was just like the Google algorithm was suddenly in our favour,'' Mr. Solar-Williams said.

Within a few months, visitors started showing up at their front door [the old website carried listed their mailing address].

After more than three years of fielding calls and turning away visitors, the couple began to wonder if they were missing an opportunity.

''I'm a big believer in spirituality, and I said to Zaida,'' Maybe, somebody is trying to tell us something,'' Mr. Williams said.

''If you think about how the culture changed between 2013 and 2016 - I'm doing Uber shares.

I'm sharing my home with Airbnb, I'm staying at Airbnbs myself, so suddenly it didn't seem so strange to let strangers into our home,'' Mrs. Soler-Williams said.

And so the couple decided to join the do-it-yourself entertainment trend of people opening up their homes to the public for concerts, plays, dinner parties and cocktail clubs, by offering a karaoke option.

They opened business in March of 2016.

Lions Roar is pricier than many other karaoke bars, rates start at $125 per hour for 10 guests or fewer, along with a $25 cleaning fee [both amounts increase depending on the number of people in the party].

But in exchange, amateur singers have access of homier and more refined space than say, a sticky-floored private room or a tiny harshly lit [and quite public] platform stage in a dive bar.

''We've always said that our brand was 'klssyoke' '' Mrs. Soler-Williams said. ''We've tried to bring some elegance to it.''

The honor and serving of some great and new trends in the world, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Lauren Vespoli.