Lady Gaga has sponsored the new iOKi karaoke application for the iPhone and iPod touch in preparation for the release of her new album ?Fame Monster.?

Four Lady Gaga songs will be included in the karaoke application, including her new single ?Bad Romance.? GridMob, the company behind iOKi, has partnered with EMI, Sony/ATV, Universal Publishing, Disney Music Group, Warner/Chappell, Chrysalis, Interscope and SBI for other music content.

?With more than 100,000 apps in the App Store, we needed a marketing plan that would help us stand above everyone else and be cost effective for a small company like ours,? said Les Borsai, cofounder of GridMob, Los Angeles. ?Lady Gaga is the biggest selling, most innovative artist in the marketplace and loved our application. 

?Thus, she and her manager Troy Carter and her record label Interscope agreed to market Lady Gaga iOKi in connection with the marketing of her new album to be released on Monday, Nov. 23,? he said. ?This gave us an opportunity for extraordinary exposure.?

Lady Gaga, also known as Stefani Germanotta, is an American recording artist on Interscope Records.

GridMob develops direct-to-consumer mobile services that connect artists, record labels and publishers to fans.

Going Gaga for mobile
The application, Lady Gaga iOKi, will be released the same day as Lady Gaga?s new album.

For $4.99, consumers can buy the application that features images and video of Lady Gaga.

The application?s supported languages include English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese.

GridMob said that it expects to deliver other karaoke applications branded by various recording artists later this year.

Karaoke tracks include instrumental and vocal mixes from the studio version of ?Bad Romance? and Lady Gaga's four biggest hits, ?Poker Face,? ?Paparazzi,? ?Just Dance? and ?Love Game.?

Additional Lady Gaga tracks can be bought within the application.

Consumers can sing along with Lady Gaga or decide to sing over the instrumental version.

The application also lets consumers record themselves and send their performance to friends.

Besides the Lady Gaga tracks, consumers can access numerous hit songs and search the iOKi library by artist, song title, era, genre, gender, album, popularity and new releases.

The application also integrates with Twitter to automatically tweet updates about a consumer?s karaoke activities.

Mr. Borsai said that the application's target demographic is Lady Gaga fans and karaoke enthusiasts of all ages.

Elias Manousos, cofounder of GridMob, said that karaoke has historically been expensive and not portable, but with his application karaoke has gone mobile.

?This platform represents a new way for consumers to interact with their favorite artists,? Mr. Manousos said. ?Branding the application with Lady Gaga is a great way to illustrate the power of this new interaction. 

?Also, Interscope and Lady Gaga?s involvement in the branding and launch helps us showcase to all the labels that this iPhone karaoke application represents a new income-generator for them with their existing libraries of master recordings,? he said. ?We have a proprietary technology that allows us to convert original master recordings into karaoke recordings (instrumentals, melody information and syncing lyrics) very quickly. 

?Historically, original recordings have not been widely used for karaoke.  We believe this is until now an untapped but enormous licensing opportunity for the labels and the publishers too.?