Solution: Literally, "empty orchestra" - NYT Crossword

You could have told me that KARAOKE translated to “drunken cacophony” and I’d have believed it; “empty orchestra” is quite a poetic way to describe singalongs. People have long replaced other voices with their own for entertainment, but the actual machine that automated this was a 1970s Japanese invention. In 2004, Daisuke Inoue, a drummer, was awarded the tongue-in-cheek Ig Nobel Peace Prize for inventing karaoke, “thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.”