Daisuke Inoue - I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing
“Usually in our lives, we watch the stars through the media. All of us want to be stars ourselves. With a mic in your hand YOU can be a star,” says the man who invented the first Karaoke machine, Daisuke Inoue.
The story of Daisuke Inoue is the story of a musician born close to Kobe, a city known for its exquisite beef a bit south of Osaka. He began as a hiki-Katari, musicians that back up Salaryman in bars and “specialise in sing-alongs, returning their performances on the fly to match the singing abilities and sobriety levels of paying customers.” Inoue was a drummer in a band in Kobes red light district and soon made himself a name because of his extraordinary skills. Meet “Dr Sing-along.”
And the demand for the Doc was so huge, that, when a regular customer asked to back him during a business trip, Inoue couldn’t attend. So Inoue recorded a tape and helped the poor man out to still perform on his trip.
Inoue began to think this idea might have a widespread appeal. So he developed a machine called the “8 Juke,” basically a reversed Jukebox or the very first Karaoke machine.
“When I made the first Juke 8s, a brother-in-law suggested I take out a patent,” Inoue said in a 2013 interview. “But at the time, I didn’t think anything would come of it.” During the early days, Inoue earned money from selling anti-bug spray for the machines. But until this day he has no regret. He believes leaving it without a patent just birthed the global phenomenon. Nowadays Karaoke [カラオケ, “empty orchestra”] is known all over the world. However, Inoue never claimed to have invented the name Karaoke.
“I don’t think karaoke would have grown as it did.”
In 2004, Inoue went to Harvard University to accept an Ig Nobel Peace Prize for "inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.
What’s for sure: Karaoke is one of the biggest success stories coming out of Japan. The global Karaoke market has been estimated to be worth nearly 10 billion USD.
Which is your favourite song on Karaoke?
