Karaoke is a word transliterated directly out of Japanese from the words ‘empty’ and ‘orchestra’. The concept of a studio without the vocal lead was made possible by developments in technology spearheaded by the Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s. Starting from Japan, the karaoke craze spread into Asia and then the rest of the world.
The karaoke machine was invented in 1971 by Daisuke Inoue, who plugged a tape player into an amplifier. Because he never took out a patent on the invention, he did not really benefit financially, even though Time Magazine named him one of the most important Asians of the 20th century and he was awarded the Ig Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 “for providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.”
