backing track

The term backing track is often used in the Japanese music industry to denote a track with no vocals, but often including both the accompanying instruments and background vocals. Often, the difference between the backing track and a karaoke track is this: backing tracks come on the CD single in question and a karaoke track is often a low-quality MIDI created by other companies for the sole purpose of furnishing the song at a karaoke box in the case that it was not released in CD form by the artist. Backing tracks can be simply the track the artist recorded over in the studio or a completely new arrangement, such as Utada Hikaru's First Love strings mix.