![]() It was, rather, an article of geeky faith - an innate confidence that karaoke’s survival instincts would propel it toward innovation ahead of everybody else. It wasn’t that the plight of Japan’s tens of thousands of karaoke establishments particularly stood out in a crisis that forced favorite bars and restaurants to close and caused the whole Japanese economy to shrink a record 7.8 percent in that very quarter. ![]() There was, I now realize, something visceral about those calls. Principally, I wanted to know what sort of tech they planned to throw at a problem that, on an early reading, seemed destined to put them all out of business. In early April, during that brief phase when lockdown felt more like an unexplored alien planet than the inescapable traffic jam it soon became, I called Japan’s biggest karaoke operators to see what they made of it all.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |