Montreal-headquartered music, media, and tech firm Stingray is concerned in quite a few companies, from promoting to streaming and traditional broadcast TV and radio.
However one in all its merchandise – a karaoke app – is rapidly changing into a regular add-on characteristic in electrical automobiles. The in-car model of the Stingray Karaoke app is out there in Tesla automobiles, and the corporate has inked offers to make it out there in Ford vehicles, in addition to in vehicles made by Chinese language EV maker BYD.
The corporate says that its catalog options 1000’s of legally licensed karaoke songs, with “new releases each Friday, and social gathering mixes expertly curated for each event”.
On Monday (December 9), Stingray introduced it had elevated and prolonged a revolving credit score facility, offering it with further liquidity for its operations and merger-and-acquisition exercise.
Stingray upped its credit score facility by CAD $80 million to CAD $500 million (approx. USD $352 million), offered by a syndicate of Canadian banks led by Nationwide Financial institution Monetary Markets and Caisse Desjardins as co-lead runners. Additionally taking part had been the Royal Financial institution of Canada (RBC), Canadian Imperial Financial institution of Commerce (CIBC), Toronto Dominion (TD) Financial institution, The Financial institution of Nova Scotia, and the government-run Enterprise Growth Financial institution of Canada (BDC).
“We’re delighted to have the continued help from our present banking syndicate and companions as we discover progress alternatives,” Stingray Co-Founder, President and CEO Eric Boyko mentioned.
“This new financing significantly enhances our present liquidity and supplies optionality for added commitments as we proceed to judge and capitalize on market alternatives.”
Because the firm’s debut on the Toronto Inventory Alternate in 2015, it has pursued a progress technique targeted on M&A, casting a broad internet within the digital media area. It acquired Australian digital music providers supplier DMD that yr, together with three TV music channels from Netherlands-headquartered Brava TV Group, which function in dozens of nations.
In 2017, it acquired C Music Leisure, the UK-headquartered operator of C Music TV, a classical music video channel. And in 2018, Stingray acquired Newfoundland Capital Corp., Canada’s second-largest personal radio broadcaster.
Right this moment, Stingray operates North America’s largest retail audio promoting community, delivering audio messaging at 30,000 retail areas. And in 2021, Stingray signed a deal with Amazon to convey numerous music channels to Amazon Prime Video. The corporate additionally has streaming leisure offers with Xfinity and Roku.
Stingray says that it has long-standing relationships with over 300 music labels, publishers, and studios together with “Sony Music, Warner Music Group, Common Music Group, BMG, Kobalt, and Mercury Studios, in addition to many unbiased content material suppliers”.
“This new financing significantly enhances our present liquidity and supplies optionality for added commitments as we proceed to judge and capitalize on market alternatives.”
Eric Boyko, Stingray
However its hottest product up to now few years has been the Stingray Karaoke app pushed (pardon the pun) by Tesla, which turned the primary EV maker so as to add an in-car karaoke app to its automobiles.
Different EV makers have since jumped on board, together with China’s BYD, which signed a deal in 2023 to convey the Stingray Karaoke app to its vehicles bought abroad.
Most just lately, Stingray signed a deal with Ford to convey karaoke to the carmaker’s all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck and Mustang Mach-E. The app will likely be out there for obtain later for different fashions which have the Ford and Lincoln Digital Expertise, together with the 2025 Ford Explorer, 2025 Lincoln Navigator, 2025 Lincoln Aviator, and 2025 Lincoln Nautilus.
Customers of the karaoke app have entry to a variety of music genres, from rock and nation to Latin Music, Ok-pop, and J-pop.
Stingray stresses the security options included within the karaoke app – for instance, the truth that scrolling lyrics usually are not out there to the driving force whereas the automobile is working.
And the karaoke isn’t restricted to vehicles. In October, Stingray introduced the characteristic would now be out there on Vizio TVs. A month later, it introduced the characteristic can be coming to Roblox.
“Stingray is dedicated to innovating the way in which folks expertise music and leisure, serving thousands and thousands of customers throughout completely different platforms, from apps to in-car leisure techniques, ” mentioned Rick Bergan, Head of Content material Distribution US at Stingray.
In its newest earnings report, for the quarter ended September 30, Stingray reported a 13.4% YoY leap in income, to CAD $93.6 million (USD $68.6 million on the common trade fee for Q3).
The corporate’s adjusted EBITDA rose 15.2% YoY to CAD $34.0 million (USD $24.9 million).
Boyko mentioned the expansion was led by its FAST (Free Advert-Supported TV Streaming) channel and retail media segments. He famous the corporate created “a complete new income stream” by a partnership with Xperi/TiVo that introduced eight new channels of in-car leisure to backseat screens in BMW Group automobiles.
“This premium video providing will likely be prolonged to different luxurious automobile producers in upcoming quarters as we place Stingray as a provider of selection on this market,” Boyko mentioned.
The corporate reviews that 2.5 million vehicles have its leisure content material on board and that it counts 400 million viewers and listeners throughout all of its providers.Music Enterprise Worldwide
