The cliffhanger at the end is presumably referring to modern karaoke machines:<p>>In 1992, a scientist named Yuichi Yasutomo created a networked karaoke system for Brother Industries. Called "tsushin karaoke" ("communications karaoke") it served up songs in MIDI format via phone lines to modem-equipped karaoke machines. This new technology swept Japan; by 1998, 94% of karaoke was being sung on networked karaoke machines.[22] As an early form of music on demand, it could be called the first successful audio streaming service.<p>Funny to read the plaintive note at the end. No prize for second place: Brother invents online distribution of software and music streaming but is ruthlessly outcompeted by Valve and Spotify, Japanese carriers have a huge lead in smartphones but are still crushed by Apple. Reminds me of Gwern's review of _The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at M.I.T._ <a href="https://gwern.net/timing" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://gwern.net/timing</a><p>>Why is their knowledge so useless? Why are success and failure so intertwined in the tech industry? The right moment cannot be known exactly in advance, so attempts to forecast will typically be off by years or worse. For many claims, there is no way to invest in an idea except by going all in and launching a company, resulting in extreme variance in outcomes, even when the idea is good and the forecasts correct about the (eventual) outcome.<p>>Progress can happen and can be foreseen long before, but the details and exact timing due to bottlenecks are too difficult to get right. Launching too early means failure, but being conservative & launching later is just as bad because regardless of forecasting, a good idea will draw overly-optimistic researchers or entrepreneurs to it like moths to a flame: all get immolated but the one with the dumb luck to kiss the flame at the perfect instant, who then wins everything, at which point everyone can see that the optimal time is past. All major success stories overshadow their long list of predecessors who did the same thing, but got unlucky. The lesson of history is that for every lesson, there is an equal and opposite lesson. So, ideas can be divided into the overly-optimistic & likely doomed, or the fait accompli. On an individual level, ideas are worthless because so many others have them too—‘multiple invention’ is the rule, and not the exception. Progress, then, depends on the ‘unreasonable man’.
But was this really the first "app store"?<p>The article mentions that the "Soft Vendor Takeru" was released at some point in 1986 (no exact date is given), but in February of the same year, a very similar system was released by Nintendo: the Famicom Disk System, which apparently worked just like the SVT:<p>> However, possibly the most audacious part of Nintendo’s new scheme was the installation of Disk System Kiosks in retail outlets all over Japan. “These allowed Famicom owners to purchase a blank Disk Card for ¥2000 and then insert it into the kiosk to have a game of their choice written to it for an additional ¥500,” explains Dillard. “Because the Disk Cards were rewritable, consumers could then bring their disk back to the kiosk to have a new game written over it when they'd finished their previous one.”<p><a href="https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2010/11/feature_slipped_disk_the_history_of_the_famicom_disk_system" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2010/11/feature_slipped_di...</a><p>Given that the FDS released fairly early in 1986, it may have preceded the SVT.<p>Admittedly, it isn't clear from the above article whether the FDS kiosks used the Internet at all. So maybe the SVT was indeed the pioneer here.