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50 free Karaoke trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Karaoke is a $10 billion global business that started with eleven coin-operated boxes in a Kobe entertainment district. This karaoke trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers about how it happened: the Japanese bandleader and the Filipino piano maker who both claim to have invented it, what the word literally means, how karaoke boxes, noraebangs and KTVs differ, why one song became dangerous to sing in the Philippines, and the world records for the biggest and longest singalongs. The second half is about the songs themselves, the ones that get grabbed off the songbook every night: who wrote them, what they were about, and the chart facts behind them, from a Neil Diamond song that Fenway Park plays every eighth inning to a Killers single that has spent nearly ten years on the UK chart. It is built for a karaoke night, a music quiz round or anyone who has ever queued for a mic. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on karaoke and on the individual songs, and each question links to the page that establishes it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word karaoke is a clipped compound of two Japanese words meaning what?
Empty orchestra
Kara means empty and okesutora is orchestra, describing music with the lead vocal missing.
Q 02Which Japanese nightclub musician is credited with building the first karaoke machine in 1971?
Daisuke Inoue
He was a bandleader and drummer who led sing-alongs for businessmen in the Sannomiya district; he never patented his machine.
Q 03What did Inoue call his original coin-operated machine?
8 Juke
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.
Q 04How did Inoue first get customers interested in his machines when Kobe's snack bars ignored them?
He hired hostesses to sing on them ostentatiously
The stunt worked but angered his fellow musicians, who saw the machines stealing their customers.
Q 05Which tongue-in-cheek award did the man credited with inventing karaoke receive in 2004?
The Ig Nobel Peace Prize
The citation praised him for providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.
Q 06Which Filipino inventor holds the only patent for a karaoke system, for his "Sing-Along System"?
Roberto del Rosario
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.
Q 07What were the instrumental-only B-side tracks used in the Philippines popularly called?
Minus-One
By the 1980s including a Minus-One track on the B-side of Philippine singles was standard practice.
Q 08What is the Philippine name for coin-operated video karaoke machines?
Videoke
Videoke became a domestic pastime and spawned nighttime videoke bars across the country.
Q 09What are private karaoke rooms called in South Korea?
Noraebang
The word blends norae, song, and bang, room; many are surprisingly dry venues and a favorite family pastime.
Q 10In mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, a karaoke establishment is generally called what?
KTV
It stands for karaoke television; big Taiwanese chains include Partyworld Cashbox and Holiday KTV.
Q 11What is the Japanese term for singing karaoke alone?
Hitokara
It abbreviates hitori karaoke, one-person karaoke; dedicated solo booths are popular in Japan.
Q 12A karaoke singer's showpiece song is called juhachiban in Japan. What does the term literally refer to?
The 18 best kabuki plays
The kanji also simply mean eighteen; the term comes from the Kabuki Juhachiban repertoire.
Q 13What is the person who runs the music and announces singers at a singing bar called?
A KJ, or karaoke jockey
KJs can now rip whole libraries to hard drives instead of hauling boxes of CD+G discs.
Q 21Where was the record for the most people singing karaoke at once set, with more than 160,000 singers?
Bristol Motor Speedway
The NASCAR crowd sang Garth Brooks' "Friends in Low Places" before the Sharpie 500.
Q 22Which country holds the record for the longest group karaoke marathon, at 1,011 hours in 2011?
Hungary
It ran from July 20 to August 31 in a Honey Grill restaurant, with no song repeated within any two-hour period.
Q 23Which US city did The New York Times call "the capital of karaoke"?
Portland, Oregon
The paper said its dozens of karaoke bars made it one of the most exciting music scenes in America.
Q 14What is the CD+G format's "G" for?
Graphics, the lyrics encoded on a subcode track
CD+G is still the most popular format for English and Spanish karaoke; it needs special players to decode the pictures.
Q 15What technique do cheap home systems use to strip vocals from ordinary CDs?
Subtracting one stereo channel from the other
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.
Q 16What was Japan's networked system that sent MIDI songs by phone line to singing machines called?
Tsushin karaoke
By 1998, 94 percent of karaoke in Japan was sung on networked machines, arguably the first successful audio streaming service.
Q 17Which company dominated the 1980s-90s karaoke video market with LaserDisc machines?
Pioneer
Karaoke's commercial launch in Australia in 1989 used Pioneer 12-inch LaserDiscs holding a maximum of 24 songs each.
Q 18Which 2003 PS2 game by Harmonix and Konami scored players on pitch, timing and rhythm?
Karaoke Revolution
SingStar, Sony's rival, was the hit in Europe and Australasia; the first karaoke video game was Karaoke Studio for the Famicom in 1987.
Q 19Which song became so linked to fatal karaoke disputes in the Philippines that some bars removed it?
My Way
Newspapers called them the "My Way killings"; some singers simply refused to perform it among strangers.
Q 20Which Chinese carmaker offered a karaoke machine as standard in its 2003 Beauty Leopard?
Geely
South Korean taxis with sound systems and microphones had appeared in the 1990s, and London later got karaoke cabs.
Q 24Per Rob Sheffield, which band's 1986 video first depicted karaoke in American pop culture?
Talking Heads
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.
Q 25Finnish producers organize which international amateur singing competition, running since 2003?
The Karaoke World Championships
Its 2011 edition inspired ABC's Karaoke Battle USA to pick American entrants; the 2025 finals were set for Bangkok.
Q 26Which late-night host's Carpool Karaoke featured Mariah Carey and Paul McCartney?
James Corden
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.
Q 27In Lost in Translation, Bill Murray's character is in Tokyo to shoot ads for which product?
Suntory whiskey
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.
Q 28"My Way" was adapted by Paul Anka from which French song?
Comme d'habitude
Claude François recorded the original in 1967; a young David Bowie had been asked to write English lyrics first, and his attempt was rejected.
Q 29Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" was released as a single in which year?
1981
By 2012 it had become the best-selling digital track from the entire twentieth century, helped by a Glee cover in 2009.
Q 30How many weeks did Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" spend at number one in the UK on its first run in 1975?
Nine
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.