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.