Karaoke History

It has been common to provide musical entertainment at a dinner or a party in Japan, as in the rest of the world, for a long time. This tradition appeared in the earliest Japanese mythology. For a long time, singing and dancing remained one of the few adult entertainments in rural areas. Noh was initially played at a tea party and guests were welcomed to join in for a cheer or a shout of praise. Dancing and singing was also a part of a samurai's education. It was expected that every samurai have a dance or a song they could perform. During the Taisho period, Utagoe Kissa, (literally song coffee shop), became popular and customers sung to a live performance of a music band.

The karaoke industry started in Japan in the early 1970s when singer Daisuke Inoue (Inoue Daisuke) was asked by frequent guests in the Utagoe Kissa, where he performed, to provide a recording of his performance so that they could sing along on a company-sponsored vacation. Realizing the potential for the market, Inoue made a tape recorder that played a song for a 100-yen coin. This was the first karaoke machine. Instead of selling karaoke machines, he leased them out, so that stores did not have to buy new songs on their own. Originally it was considered a fad which was lacking the "live atmosphere" of a real performance. It was also regarded as somewhat expensive since 100 yen in the 1970s was the price of two typical lunches. However, it caught on as a popular entertainment. Karaoke machines were initially placed in restaurants or hotel rooms; soon, new businesses called Karaoke Box with compartmented rooms became popular. (See below "Public Places for Karaoke" and "Terms of Karaoke" for a description of karaoke boxes.) 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."

Early karaoke machines used cassette tapes but technological advances replaced this with CDs, VCDs, laserdiscs and, currently, DVDs. In 1992, Taito introduced the X2000 that fetched music via a dial-up telephone network. Its repertoire of music and graphics was limited, but the advantage of continuous updates and the smaller machine size saw it gradually replace traditional machines. Karaoke machines connected via fiber-optic links to provide instant high-quality music and video are becoming increasingly popular.

A big karaoke-box building in Tokyo, which was featured in the movie Lost In Translation.Karaoke soon spread to the rest of Asia and then to the United States in the 1990s. Facilities such as karaoke bars or "KTV boxes" provided the venue, equipment and software for amateur singers to entertain each other.

Its popularity has spread rapidly to the United States, Canada and other Western countries. Some people still regard it as "hokey" and simply a method for the intoxicated to embarrass themselves, but as the novelty has worn off and the available selection of music has exploded, more and more people within the industry see it as a very profitable form of lounge and nightclub entertainment. It is not uncommon for some bars to have karaoke performances seven nights a week, commonly with much more high-end sound equipment than the small, standalone machines noted above. Dance floors and lighting effects are also becoming common sights in karaoke bars. Lyrics are often displayed on multiple TV sets around the bar, including big screens.

Karaoke Technology

A basic karaoke machine consists of audio input, a means of altering the pitch of the music (not the singer) and an audio output. Some low-end machines attempt to provide vocal suppression so that one can feed regular songs into the machine and suppress the voice of the original singer, however this is not very effective (see below). Most common machines are audio mixers with microphone input built-in with CD+G, Video CD, Laser Disc, or DVD players. CD+G players use a special track called subcode to encode the lyrics and pictures displayed on the screen, while the other formats natively display both audio and video. In some countries, karaoke with video lyrics display capabilities is called KTV.

Most karaoke machines have technology that electronically changes the pitch of music so that amateur singers can sing along to any music source by choosing a key that is appropriate for their vocal range, while maintaining the original tempo of the song. (There were some very old systems that used cassettes, and these changed the pitch by altering playback speed, but none are still on the market, and their commercial use is virtually nonexistent.)

A popular game using karaoke is to randomly type in a number and call up a song, which participants take a turn to try to sing as much as they can. In some machines, this game is pre-programmed and may be limited to a genre so that they cannot call up an obscure national anthem that none of them can sing. This game has come to be called "Kamikaze Karaoke" in some parts of the United States and Canada.

Many low-end entertainment systems (boom boxes etc) have a karaoke mode that attempts to remove the vocal track from general (non-karaoke) audio CDs. This is done by center removal which exploits the fact that in most music the vocals are in the center. This means that the voice, as part of the music, has equal volume on both stereo channels and no phase difference. To get the quasi-karaoke (mono) track the left channel of the original audio is subtracted from the right channel. The crudeness of that approach is reflected in the often poor performance of voice removal. Common effects are hearing the echo of the voice track (due to stereo echo being put on the vocals), and also other instruments that happen to be mixed into the center get removed (snare/bass drum, solo instruments), degrading this approach to hardly more than a gimmick in those devices.

Karaoke Today

Is karaoke a dying fad ? The answer to this is no. What has happened to karaoke is that it has spread out. Approximately four to five years ago in the NJ area it was a brand new entertainment form. It first became popular in some bars and restaurants. However, not all club owners were willing to take a chance on it. (We had to produce our own 10 minute video clip to show club owners what we were trying to sell them, because most had never heard of it.) At that time karaoke equipment and software was very expensive and not many DJ'S or entertainment companies or restaurants wanted to invest in it. As karaoke became popular in a few clubs, those clubs became jammed with people, both those who participated and those who watched. This was great for club owners who saw bar profits rise but not for those who wanted to sing. Although it is fun to sing to a standing room only packed club, it wasn't fun if you only got to sing once or twice in a four hour evening show. As club owners who did not have karaoke saw what was happening, a demand was created for additional shows and show hosts. The crowds spread out to additional clubs as the demand was met. Today those people who like to sing still come out and participate in a karaoke evening. We have learned that there are a lot of people who love to sing but cannot commit to the time it takes to be in a band. As a former bass player in a working band (that is still together after 25 years) I can tell you that we rehearsed two nights a week and played two to three nights a week, 52 weeks a year. (Tough on family life).

Karaoke technology, with on screen lyrics prompting you with color change to keep on tempo, key change capabilities on demand for transposition, and an always willing band with thousands of songs in thier repertoire, have eliminated the need for the time sacrifice to perform with a live band. You can come out and perform when you feel like it!

The karaoke industry has broken into two areas, the home user who treats karaoke as another home entertainment item, and the professional karaoke host, who sells his or her services in the entertainment field. These two marketing areas have generated hardware (equipment) and software (music) that has been designed for each market. Remarkably enough most of this equipment and music can cross over to either segment of the industry.

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The Karaoke Store and More!
266 Market Street
Elmwood Park NJ, 07407
1(800)SingSing
singsing@karaokestore.com