Daisuke Inoue

Daisuke Inoue (井上 大佑, Inoue Daisuke?, born May 10, 1940) is a Japanese businessman best known as the inventor of the karaoke machine. Inoue, a musician in his youth employed in backing businesspeople who wanted to sing in bars, invented the machine as a means of allowing them to sing without live back-up. He did not patent the machine and so did not directly profit, but he continued to work in the industry it generated, including patenting a pesticide for karaoke machines. Named one of Time Magazines "Most Influential Asians of the Century" in 1999, he was awarded the Ig Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 and in 2005 was the subject of the Japanese biopic Karaoke.