Shigeichi Negishi was so inspired when someone told him he couldn’t sing that he invented karaoke (Picture: Matt Alt)
The man who invented the world’s first karaoke machine has died aged 100.
We have Shigeichi Negishi to thank (or blame, depending on your perspective) for all the nights spent howling Total Eclipse of the Heart while several alcopops down.
‘Farewell to another legend’, author Matt Alt said this afternoon sharing the news.
Shigeichi Negishi, from Tokyo, Japan, automated singalong machines in 1967 after a colleague accused him of singing badly at work.
‘If only they could hear my voice over a backing track,’ he thought, and so the idea for karaoke was born.
Luckily, he ran an electronics company so was the perfect man to invent something allowing everyone to sound like that they had the support of backing singers at the 02 Arena. Sort of.
His Sparko Box invention led to an explosion of similar karaoke machines that were so popular professional singers got angry it could put them out of business.
Mr Negishi died on January 29 after a fall, his daughter Atsumi Takano said, however the news was not widely publicised until now.
‘He earned the enmity of performers who saw his machine as a threat to their jobs. It’s an eerie precursor of the debate surrounding AI’s impact on artists today,’ Mr Alt said.
He wrote an obituary for Mr Negishi in the Wall Street Journal, having interviewed the inventor in 2018 for his book ‘Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World’.
The centenarian was not the only inventor who helped make karaoke a global phenomenon, but he was the first.
After his Sparko box was released, others soon made their own versions with musician Daisuke Inoue releasing the 8 Juke box four years later in 1971, often credited as the first.
Mr Alt said, however, the All-Japan Karaoke Industrialist Association recognised the Sparko Box as the first one, paving the way for karaoke as we know it today.
Despite his idea sparking a worldwide craze, it didn’t make him millions as he never patented the invention – and even gave up making the singalong boxes as he ‘grew tired of the conflict with musicians and the grind of door-to-door sales and maintenance,’ Mr Alt said.
However, his daughter said he was happy just to know that his idea had grown into something so enjoyed: ‘He felt a lot of pride in seeing his idea evolve into a culture of having fun through song around the world. To him, spending a hundred years surrounded by his family was reward enough.’
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