Standard Corporation (Japan)

Overview

Standard Corporation is a Japanese company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, operating karaoke box venues, restaurants, and hybrid cafe establishments. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Kosidaka and a consolidated subsidiary of Kosidaka Holdings. Across Japan the company runs karaoke boxes under brands including JOYSOUND, alongside restaurant and hybrid cafe operations. The first incarnation of the company passed through the corporate orbits of USEN, BMB, and Brother Industries’ subsidiary XING; during the USEN group era, preliminary rounds of the artist audition a-motion were held at affiliated karaoke boxes.

On January 20, 2010, USEN transferred all shares it held in BMB to XING, making BMB a XING subsidiary. On July 1 of the same year, XING absorbed BMB, placing Standard under the XING umbrella. From March 2011 onward, operation of the JOYSOUND karaoke box chain was transferred from XING to Standard. On April 1, 2014, Standard absorbed Media Create, a XING subsidiary, inheriting the karaoke box chain Megaton and the hybrid cafe chain Yuyu Kukan. After entering the XING fold, stores linked with group companies such as XING Music Entertainment and Teichiku Entertainment appeared. In Brother Industries’ mid-term strategy “CS B2027” covering fiscal 2025 through 2027, the Network & Content business — covering XING’s commercial online karaoke system JOYSOUND and Standard’s karaoke venue operations — was positioned as a “profitability improvement business,” with a review of the earnings structure aimed at generating stable profit and cash. On September 12, 2025, Brother Industries and Kosidaka Holdings announced that all of Standard’s businesses (karaoke box, hybrid cafe, and restaurant operations) would be transferred to Kosidaka SP, established by Kosidaka Holdings on September 1, 2025, via absorption-type split effective November 1 of that year. The seventy-three venues Standard operated, including JOYSOUND and Yuyu Kukan by JOYSOUND, were transferred to Kosidaka SP on November 1, 2025, and Kosidaka SP simultaneously changed its trade name to Standard Corporation (second generation). The second-generation company’s headquarters remains in Minato, Tokyo, though its registered head office is located in Shibuya, Tokyo, the same address as Kosidaka Holdings. Venues acquired from the first-generation Standard will not be rebranded to the company’s own Karaoke Manekineko brand; the JOYSOUND brand continues in use. XING will concentrate on the manufacture and development of the commercial online karaoke system JOYSOUND.

History

Standard Corporation was incorporated in December 1993. In August 2003 it changed its trade name from BMB Axis to U’s BMB Standard, and at the same time took over store operations from USEN. In January 2005 the trade name was changed again, from U’s BMB Standard to Standard. In March 2007 the head office moved to Midtown Tower in Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo. In April 2009 the company ended its JAL Mileage Bank “Karaoke Mile” service, which had been offered at the U-STYLE, U-BOU, and EL-NOTES karaoke boxes.

January 20, 2010 was the hinge on which the whole structure turned: the parent company BMB moved from USEN’s subsidiary column to XING’s, making Standard a grandchild company of XING. In March of that year Standard absorbed Taikan Enterprise, a BMB subsidiary. In June the head office relocated to the Shiba Park Building in Shiba Koen, Minato. On July 1, XING absorbed BMB, and Standard became a direct subsidiary of XING. In December the company withdrew from the buffet bar business. In March 2011 it took over three JOYSOUND outlets from XING by absorption-type split. In March 2013 the head office moved to the Shinagawa NBS Building in Konan, Minato, while the registered head office remained at the Shiba Park Building. On April 1, 2014, Standard absorbed Media Create, a XING subsidiary.

On November 1, 2025, the karaoke box, hybrid cafe, and restaurant businesses were transferred to Kosidaka SP, a subsidiary of Kosidaka Holdings, and Kosidaka SP changed its trade name to Standard Corporation (second generation) the same day. On April 2, 2026, the liquidation of the first-generation company was completed.

The second-generation company was established as Kosidaka SP on September 1, 2025. It received the karaoke box, hybrid cafe, and restaurant businesses from the first-generation Standard by absorption-type split on November 1, 2025, and changed its trade name to Standard Corporation (second generation). On December 1, 2025, its registered head office moved from Dogenzaka, Shibuya, Tokyo, to Konan, Minato, the same location as its operating headquarters.

Media Create, the entity absorbed in 2014, had its own long record. It was founded on July 2, 1998, in Numazu, Shizuoka Prefecture, as a subsidiary of Goto, created to reorganize Goto’s karaoke business. In 2000 it opened the first Yuyu Kukan manga cafe and joined the TSUTAYA franchise network. In 2001 it began franchising Yuyu Kukan. In 2002 it signed a franchise agreement with Culture Convenience Club, and in October of that year a third-party allotment of shares took it out of Goto’s subsidiary column. On August 5, 2005, it listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers market under securities code 2451, and it concluded a franchise capital and business agreement with Culture Convenience Club. On November 26, 2013, a tender offer by XING succeeded, making Media Create a wholly owned XING subsidiary and simultaneously delisting it from Mothers. On April 1, 2014, it was absorbed by Standard.

Business Model

Standard Corporation’s revenue rested on three legs: karaoke boxes, restaurants, and hybrid cafes. The karaoke box business carried the most weight, and it did so under a widening set of names. The company developed JOYSOUND direct-managed stores and J-STYLE by JOYSOUND, alongside inherited banners U-STYLE and U-BOU from the old BMB lineage, Megaton from the Media Create lineage, and Song Park and Mr. Karaoke. The banner count was not a strategy of variety so much as an artifact of acquisition, and the company eventually treated it that way. Beginning with the November 5, 2010 conversion of the U-BOU Yagoto store in Nagoya to JOYSOUND Yagoto, the old BMB and Media Create brands were folded into JOYSOUND direct-managed stores and J-STYLE by JOYSOUND one by one. Every store in the Tohoku region, the Koshinetsu region, Toyama Prefecture, the Kinki region, the Shikoku region, and the Kyushu region completed the switch. The retired names tell their own story: Heartland and Break Spot in Niigata Prefecture, and EL-NOTES across nine prefectures — Nagano, Kyoto, Okayama, Tokushima, Ehime, Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Oita, and Kagoshima. Eighteen prefectures, among them Hokkaido, Akita, Tochigi, Gunma, Ishikawa, Fukui, Yamanashi, Gifu, Nara, Wakayama, Tottori, Shimane, Okayama, Kagawa, Kochi, Saga, Miyazaki, and Okinawa, ended up with no direct-managed karaoke box at all.

Hardware was the quiet engine underneath the model. Because Standard sat inside XING, every store installed JOYSOUND and only JOYSOUND. The old BMB stores had run UGA; the old Media Create stores had run UGA and Daiichikosho’s DAM. Both fleets were converted to JOYSOUND after the XING acquisition. This is a karaoke operator whose machine supplier and whose parent are the same company, and whose brand consolidation and hardware consolidation moved on the same schedule.

The restaurant business was a satellite operation, not a separate customer base. Every listed venue occupied the same building as a JOYSOUND direct-managed store: Japanese-style dining Wakatsuki shared space with JOYSOUND Koriyama Chuo-dori in Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture; CLUB Joy sat on the top floor of JOYSOUND Kanayama in Atsuta Ward, Nagoya, as a fully membership-based, reservation-only premium karaoke club; U-LOWC stood with JOYSOUND Hamamatsu Yurakucho in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture; the shabu-shabu, sukiyaki, and private dining concept Tenku operated alongside JOYSOUND Shinagawa Konan Exit, JOYSOUND Dotonbori 2-chome, and JOYSOUND Tsuchiura. Several of these have closed. Wakatsuki, U-LOWC, and the Dotonbori and Tsuchiura Tenku locations are listed as shut. The building is the business: a karaoke customer on the third floor is a dinner customer on the first, and the lease is amortized across two revenue lines.

The hybrid cafe business came from Media Create and ran under Yuyu Kukan by JOYSOUND across Kanagawa, Shizuoka, and Aichi Prefectures. From 2016 the company opened a city-center internet cafe format called NET-CUBE, starting with the Chofu Ekimae store in Chofu, Tokyo, on June 1, 2016. Shinjuku West Exit followed on February 17, 2017; Shibuya on August 23, 2017; Tachikawa North Exit on November 16, 2017; and Nishi-Kasai on July 3, 2020. Two NET-CUBE stores remained in Tokyo.

Karaoke boxes are a fixed-cost business. The room is built, the machine is installed, and the meter runs or it does not. Standard’s answer to the hours when it does not was to rent the same rooms for other uses: video and live viewing screenings, musical instrument practice, web conferences and remote work, and Nintendo Switch docks. One offer was unusually literal about its corporate lineage — loaner sewing machines, extended on the logic that the former parent, Brother Industries, built sewing machines and that a karaoke room offers a wide, flat space in which to handle fabric.

The buffet bar business, once run as PINK BIG PIG in Shinjuku, Tokyo, and SLOW in Hakata Ward, Fukuoka, Fukuoka Prefecture, was the one leg that was cut. SLOW’s operating rights were transferred to another company at the moment Standard entered the XING fold, and PINK BIG PIG closed on December 31, 2010, ending the category entirely.

Cultural Impact

The a-motion artist audition held its preliminary rounds inside the chain’s karaoke boxes during the USEN group years, which put an amateur competition and a room-rental business in the same building. The JAL Mileage Bank “Karaoke Mile” program, run at U-STYLE, U-BOU, and EL-NOTES until its termination in April 2009, treated an hour of singing as a fungible unit convertible into airline miles. Neither survived in the form described here. What did survive, until the 2025 transfer, was the machine-brand name on the sign: JOYSOUND. Kosidaka, the incoming owner, held its own brand in Karaoke Manekineko, and the transferred stores did not take it. The seventy-three venues moved on November 1, 2025, kept the JOYSOUND name.