He is often mistakenly referred to as the inventor of karaoke for this reason.
Instead, the money went to a Filipino businessman by the name of Roberto del Rosario, who became the first patent holder for his machine titled the Sing Along Machine. Neither Inoue nor Negishi saw a dime from their inventions. In fact, the karaoke machine was independently invented no fewer than five times between 19.Īround the same time Inoue invented the 8 Juke - a cube-shaped vending machine with a microphone attached, Shigeichi Negishi was creating the spark box - another box-shaped machine, which played 8-bit tapes connected to a microphone. But Inoue was not solely responsible for karaoke.