A Brief History of Karaoke

The first Karaoke machine was invented by Japanese musician Daisuke Inoue in Kobe, Japan in the early 1970s. As its popularity spread through Japan, karaoke spread to East and Southeast Asia during the 1980s and other parts of the world in its modern form. It is a Japanese tradition to provide musical entertainment at a dinner or a party. Japanese drummer Daisuke Inoue constantly asked by many guests at Utagoe Kissa, to give them a recording of his performance so that they could sing along a vacation. Seeing an opportunity to make money, Inoue made a tape recorder that played a song for a 100-yen coin.

Being a shrewd business mind, Inoue did not give his machines away; seeing an opportunity for a constant income, he leased the machines. Although it was originally seen as a expensive fad in the 1970s, it caught on as a popular entertainment. The machines were originally placed in hotel rooms and restaurants. Soon, new businesses called karaoke boxes, with individual rooms, became popular.

In 2004, Daisuke Inoue was awarded the tongue-in-cheek Ig Nobel Peace Prize for inventing karaoke, "thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other."

Although Inoue was a shrewd business man he failed to patent his invention, losing his chance to become one of Japan's richest men. A Filipino inventor, Roberto del Rosario, who called his sing-along system Minus-One, now holds the patent for the device now commonly known as the "karaoke machine." Following inquest with a Japanese company claiming to have invented the machine first, it was found del Rosario's patents were issued in 1983 and 1986, more than a decade after Inoue's original unpatented invention of the device in 1971.