Free online KAR to TXT converter

What the KAR format is

KAR is a karaoke file format based on Standard MIDI. It stores musical notes, instrument and timing data, and usually lyric events synchronized with the song. Karaoke programs such as vanBasco's Karaoke Player, KaraFun, and MIDI sequencers can open KAR files; they are commonly encountered in karaoke song collections and older MIDI-based music software.

What the TXT format is

TXT is unformatted plain text. It is suitable for editing lyrics in a basic editor, importing them into text-processing tools, searching and archiving, and sharing with systems that cannot read MIDI karaoke files. It has no fields for notes, tempo, channels, lyric timing, fonts, or synchronized playback, so those parts of the KAR file are discarded.

How to actually convert KAR to TXT

Use the online converter

1. Open the free converter on 101convert.com; no software installation is required.
2. Select the .kar file from your device.
3. Choose TXT as the output format and start the conversion.
4. Download the resulting .txt file and open it in a plain-text editor such as Notepad or TextEdit.

The output normally contains the lyric events stored in the MIDI data. If the source contains no lyric events, conversion cannot create lyrics from the instrumental notes.

Extract lyric events with Python

For local, repeatable processing, install the MIDI library mido and save this script as extract_kar_lyrics.py:

from mido import MidiFile
import sys

source, destination = sys.argv[1], sys.argv[2]
midi = MidiFile(source)

with open(destination, "w", encoding="utf-8") as out:
    for track in midi.tracks:
        for message in track:
            if message.type == "lyrics":
                out.write(message.text)
                out.write("\n")

Run it with:

python -m pip install mido
python extract_kar_lyrics.py song.kar song.txt

This method extracts MIDI lyric meta-events only. It does not render the melody, preserve karaoke timing, or automatically reconstruct line breaks from every author's lyric-marker convention.

Quality and compatibility limitations

KAR files can store lyrics as individual syllables or fragments, so the TXT result may require manual spacing and line-break cleanup. Some files use MIDI text events instead of lyric events; a lyric-only extractor will omit those, while a converter that exports all text events may include titles, credits, or other metadata. Character encoding also varies in older files, so accented characters may need correction after conversion.

TXT cannot preserve synchronized lyrics, MIDI notes, tempo, key, instruments, or karaoke formatting. Keep the original KAR file if playback or timed lyric display may be needed later.