The fourth is Yamashita Toshiharu, who built an 8-track recording and playback deck for training singers. Third is Bekku Hiroshi, who brought out a specialty karaoke machine for singing on buses. The second is Hamasaki Iwao, who helped invent the Juke (Box), which let singers perform their own duet with a pre-recorded professional. The first is Negishi Shigeichi, who added recording and mixing capabilities to an automotive 8-track car stereo. Instead, I have chosen 12 people who contributed to the “dawn of karaoke,” from 1965 to 1975. Modern karaoke equipment is a complex interplay of hardware, software, systems, and services, each of which have many inventors and developers, so there is no one person responsible for the phenomenon.
There is no way to identify a single karaoke inventor. In other words, it was a kara (empty) oke (orchestra).Ī report on the Takarazuka Revue’s use of Matsushita equipment to replace their absent orchestra in the Rajio-Jigyōbu Shinbun (November 1, 1956). The show went on, but the orchestra pit was empty. In 1956, the group’s orchestra went on strike, and with public performances about to be canceled, the theater management asked Matsushita Electric Company to provide recorded materials to supply music for the performance. The word karaoke is a coinage whose origin is related to the Takarazuka Revue theater troupe.
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In addition, if we add up software companies’ sales of ¥70 billion, content distribution of ¥272.7 billion, and fees for karaoke apps for smartphones, car navigation systems, and other home uses, we can put the overall scale of the karaoke business at nearly ¥1 trillion a year in Japan. At the same time, some are taking a fresh look at the benefits of karaoke in nursing care, due to worries about worsening dementia in older patients who no longer have access to the karaoke establishments they used to frequent.Īccording to the Karaoke White Paper 2020, a report by the All-Japan Karaoke Industrialist Association, the pre-COVID 2019 market scope for singing/drinking establishments (including bars with karaoke equipment) was around ¥151.3 billion, karaoke booths around ¥379.8 billion, and other venues offering karaoke services around ¥45.6 billion, for a total market of around ¥576.5 billion. Important topics include temporary or permanent closures of karaoke businesses, an increase in at-home karaoke, the transformation from solo karaoke to “non-singing” karaoke, and even the transformation of karaoke booths to multi-use spaces for remote work and other purposes. Even with the pandemic, the karaoke business is still making news.