Chapter 19 Karaoke Scoring Machine: My First Patented Invention

Seven years later, in 1998, I returned to China to establish the Microsoft Greater China Technical Support Center.In a gathering of friends in Shanghai, all the people present took turns to sing heartily, and everyone applauded the singer without hesitation.Once the singing is over, the karaoke scorer will display a higher or lower score.At this time, it will bring a lot of laughter.There will always be people complaining that there is a problem with the scoring method of this scoring device, which does not correctly reflect the true level of the singer.What's even more damning is that no one can get a high score of 85 or more.

In order to "rehabilitate" this wronged machine, I, who usually don't sing much, walked to the concert stage "confidently" and performed a song I was familiar with "affectionately".The initial applause was just a symbolic compliment, but after I finished singing, the applause was much warmer, mixed with the sound of uncontrollable surprise.I saw the unprecedented high score of the night appeared on the screen - 93 points!This made me a little proud, not only because of the numbers on the machine, but also because my friends didn't know that I was the inventor of the karaoke scoring machine.

Japan is the birthplace of karaoke.Kara means empty in Japanese, and OK is the abbreviation of Japanese symphony, which means that there is an invisible symphony orchestra behind it.I loved to sing karaoke when I was in Japan and the United States, and my major was speech signal processing, so I naturally got the inspiration to make a karaoke scorer. In the beginning, I just wanted to make a little thing for fun.I use my own singing voice as the scoring standard. If I feel that I can sing well, I can adjust it to a score above 90. If I sing well, I can tune it to 60 or 70 points. (Later, I summarized to my friends the trick to get high scores in karaoke: just imitate Tang Jun’s voice in KTV. If you haven’t heard me sing, first, keep the microphone as close to your mouth as possible; second , when singing, the tail sound is a little bit longer; thirdly, my machine is very concerned about whether the singer is singing with emotion, if he puts in emotion and the tone of voice is ups and downs, he will definitely get a high score.)

Unexpectedly, after a few friends came to try it, they all said that this scoring device is interesting and accurate, and has great commercial value.They were amazed that a machine could score people's singing voices, and naturally the requirements for the accuracy of the scores would not be too high. But my monthly scholarship at that time was only $800, and I had no funds and no brand. It was not easy to develop an invention into a product.The only way I can think of is to sell the technology to someone else.At that time, the company with the highest market share of karaoke machines was Pioneer of Japan, followed by Samsung of South Korea.But the market share of the two differs by more than 10 times.Because I have a background of studying in Japan, I wanted to sell this patent to Pioneer, but they were not interested at all.It just so happens that I know a Korean friend who knows someone from Samsung's US branch.

At that time, Samsung's international reputation was still very low.When I presented my idea to the people at Samsung, they thought it was a great idea.However, they emphasized that users will not pay more for such an extra function on the karaoke machine.I don't have any experience, but it sounded right to me.They offered to buy out my patent for US$80,000, and my psychological price was US$30,000, so I told them: "Actually, Chinese people don't care too much about money, what I care about is that my technology can be applied. "So we made a deal. I was very excited when I got the money.The poor student suddenly became an 80,000 millionaire!