50 Fun Facts About Karaoke

The word karaoke is a clipped compound of two Japanese words meaning what?

Kara means empty and okesutora is orchestra, describing music with the lead vocal missing.

Which Japanese nightclub musician is credited with building the first karaoke machine in 1971?

He was a bandleader and drummer who led sing-alongs for businessmen in the Sannomiya district; he never patented his machine.

What did Inoue call his original coin-operated machine?

He had 11 built at about $425 each, with an amplifier, a microphone, a coin box and a car stereo playing special 8-track tapes.

How did Inoue first get customers interested in his machines when Kobe's snack bars ignored them?

The stunt worked but angered his fellow musicians, who saw the machines stealing their customers.

Which tongue-in-cheek award did the man credited with inventing karaoke receive in 2004?

The citation praised him for providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.

Which Filipino inventor holds the only patent for a karaoke system, for his "Sing-Along System"?

He was a piano manufacturer whose system began as a teaching device for his Trebel School of Music; the patents were issued in 1983 and 1986.

What were the instrumental-only B-side tracks used in the Philippines popularly called?

By the 1980s including a Minus-One track on the B-side of Philippine singles was standard practice.

What is the Philippine name for coin-operated video karaoke machines?

Videoke became a domestic pastime and spawned nighttime videoke bars across the country.

What are private karaoke rooms called in South Korea?

The word blends norae, song, and bang, room; many are surprisingly dry venues and a favorite family pastime.

In mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, a karaoke establishment is generally called what?

It stands for karaoke television; big Taiwanese chains include Partyworld Cashbox and Holiday KTV.

What is the Japanese term for singing karaoke alone?

It abbreviates hitori karaoke, one-person karaoke; dedicated solo booths are popular in Japan.

A karaoke singer's showpiece song is called juhachiban in Japan. What does the term literally refer to?

The kanji also simply mean eighteen; the term comes from the Kabuki Juhachiban repertoire.

What is the person who runs the music and announces singers at a singing bar called?

KJs can now rip whole libraries to hard drives instead of hauling boxes of CD+G discs.

What is the CD+G format's "G" for?

CD+G is still the most popular format for English and Spanish karaoke; it needs special players to decode the pictures.

What technique do cheap home systems use to strip vocals from ordinary CDs?

It exploits the fact that vocals are usually mixed dead center; it also removes centered drums and bass, so it is little more than a gimmick.

What was Japan's networked system that sent MIDI songs by phone line to singing machines called?

By 1998, 94 percent of karaoke in Japan was sung on networked machines, arguably the first successful audio streaming service.

Which company dominated the 1980s-90s karaoke video market with LaserDisc machines?

Karaoke's commercial launch in Australia in 1989 used Pioneer 12-inch LaserDiscs holding a maximum of 24 songs each.

Which 2003 PS2 game by Harmonix and Konami scored players on pitch, timing and rhythm?

SingStar, Sony's rival, was the hit in Europe and Australasia; the first karaoke video game was Karaoke Studio for the Famicom in 1987.

Which song became so linked to fatal karaoke disputes in the Philippines that some bars removed it?

Newspapers called them the "My Way killings"; some singers simply refused to perform it among strangers.

Which Chinese carmaker offered a karaoke machine as standard in its 2003 Beauty Leopard?

South Korean taxis with sound systems and microphones had appeared in the 1990s, and London later got karaoke cabs.

Where was the record for the most people singing karaoke at once set, with more than 160,000 singers?

The NASCAR crowd sang Garth Brooks' "Friends in Low Places" before the Sharpie 500.

Which country holds the record for the longest group karaoke marathon, at 1,011 hours in 2011?

It ran from July 20 to August 31 in a Honey Grill restaurant, with no song repeated within any two-hour period.

Which US city did The New York Times call "the capital of karaoke"?

The paper said its dozens of karaoke bars made it one of the most exciting music scenes in America.

Per Rob Sheffield, which band's 1986 video first depicted karaoke in American pop culture?

The "Wild Wild Life" video has bar patrons taking turns at the mic, though a Magnum, P.I. episode had shown a Honolulu karaoke bar a year earlier.

Finnish producers organize which international amateur singing competition, running since 2003?

Its 2011 edition inspired ABC's Karaoke Battle USA to pick American entrants; the 2025 finals were set for Bangkok.

Which late-night host's Carpool Karaoke featured Mariah Carey and Paul McCartney?

Corden says the idea came from a Red Nose Day sketch in which he sang along with George Michael in a car; Mariah Carey agreed to go first after seeing that clip.

In Lost in Translation, Bill Murray's character is in Tokyo to shoot ads for which product?

He and Scarlett Johansson end up singing at a karaoke box; the idea came from a real 1970s Suntory ad Akira Kurosawa made with Francis Ford Coppola.

"My Way" was adapted by Paul Anka from which French song?

Claude François recorded the original in 1967; a young David Bowie had been asked to write English lyrics first, and his attempt was rejected.

Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" was released as a single in which year?

By 2012 it had become the best-selling digital track from the entire twentieth century, helped by a Glee cover in 2009.

How many weeks did Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" spend at number one in the UK on its first run in 1975?

It returned to number one for five more weeks after Freddie Mercury died in 1991, the first single to top the UK chart twice with the same recording.

At which ballpark has "Sweet Caroline" been played in the eighth inning of every game since 2002?

Neil Diamond performed it live there on opening night 2010 and led the crowd again days after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

Besides Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, who co-wrote "Livin' on a Prayer"?

It was the band's second consecutive Billboard Hot 100 number one and spent four weeks on top in early 1987.

The 1983 Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton duet that topped the Hot 100 was written by which group?

It gave the Gibb brothers number ones in five successive decades; a 2009 Comic Relief version made Tom Jones, at 68, the oldest person with a UK number one at the time.

Which song knocked "Total Eclipse of the Heart" off number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1983?

Bonnie Tyler's hit had spent four weeks on top, blocking another song by the same writer-producer, Air Supply's "Making Love Out of Nothing at All".

Who wrote and produced Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart"?

Tyler sought him out after seeing Meat Loaf perform "Bat Out of Hell" on The Old Grey Whistle Test; the single has sold more than 13 million copies.

Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" won a Grammy in which category, the only time it was ever awarded?

Gaynor recorded the vocal in a back brace after a fall at a concert; the song entered the National Recording Registry in 2016.

Which Killers single is the longest-charting song in UK singles chart history?

It only ever peaked at number 10 in Britain, but is the third biggest selling and streaming song of all time there.

Toto's "Africa" was written by which two band members?

It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1983 and has since been certified Diamond.

Billy Joel wrote "Piano Man" in C, but by the 2010s performed it in which key as his voice deepened?

It has sold more than five million copies in the US and passed a billion Spotify streams by 2024, second in his catalogue only to "Uptown Girl".

Which Oasis song became the first track from the 1990s to reach a billion Spotify streams, in 2020?

Liam Gallagher performed it with Beady Eye at the 2012 Olympics closing ceremony.

Sinatra's "My Way" peaked at only No. 27 in the US, but spent how many weeks in the UK top 40?

That was the fifth-longest run in UK chart history, though the song never climbed higher than number 5.

Roughly how big was the global karaoke market estimated to be in the mid-2020s?

Neither of the men credited with inventing the machine ever profited much from it; the money went to the big Japanese electronics firms.

Which YouTube channel became the platform's largest singalong channel, passing 11 million subscribers in 2023?

KaraFun grew out of Recisio, a 2006 downloadable karaoke program that became a subscription service in 2011.

What is the bar game of punching in a random song number and singing whatever comes up called?

Some machines pre-program the game and limit it to a genre, so nobody gets stuck with an obscure national anthem.

What is "movieoke" or karamovie?

It originated in 2003 and is usually done with software that mutes the actors and freezes the screen.

Which NBC series of 1961-66 superimposed lyrics on screen so viewers could join in at home?

Host Mitch Miller and his chorus provided a karaoke-like format long before the word existed.

Shigeichi Negishi's 1967 coin-operated machine, the first sold commercially, carried what brand name?

The Japanese engineer ran into distribution troubles and stopped making it soon after.

The first karaoke video game, Karaoke Studio, was released in 1987 for which console?

Its tiny song catalogue gave it little replay value, and karaoke games stayed niche until Karaoke Revolution in 2003.

Roberto del Rosario's company Trebel Industries was the Philippines' leading maker of what?

He played piano in the Executive Combo Band, an amateur jazz group of politicians and businessmen.

Roughly how much did each of Daisuke Inoue's original 11 home-made 8 Juke machines cost to build?

Each box held an amplifier, a microphone, a coin box and an 8-track player, and was loaned to bars for a share of takings.