Montreal-headquartered music, media, and tech company Stingray is involved in numerous businesses, from advertising to streaming and conventional broadcast TV and radio.
But one of its products – a karaoke app – is quickly becoming a standard add-on feature in electric vehicles. The in-car version of the Stingray Karaoke app is available in Tesla vehicles, and the company has inked deals to make it available in Ford cars, as well as in cars made by Chinese EV maker BYD.
The company says that its catalog features thousands of legally licensed karaoke songs, with “new releases every Friday, and party mixes expertly curated for every occasion”.
On Monday (December 9), Stingray announced it had increased and extended a revolving credit facility, providing it with additional liquidity for its operations and merger-and-acquisition activity.
Stingray upped its credit facility by CAD $80 million to CAD $500 million (approx. USD $352 million), provided by a syndicate of Canadian banks led by National Bank Financial Markets and Caisse Desjardins as co-lead runners. Also participating were the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), Toronto Dominion (TD) Bank, The Bank of Nova Scotia, and the government-run Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC).
“We are delighted to have the ongoing support from our current banking syndicate and partners as we explore growth opportunities,” Stingray Co-Founder, President and CEO Eric Boyko said.
“This new financing greatly enhances our current liquidity and provides optionality for additional commitments as we continue to evaluate and capitalize on market opportunities.”
Since the company’s debut on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2015, it has pursued a growth strategy focused on M&A, casting a broad net in the digital media space. It acquired Australian digital music services provider DMD that year, along with three TV music channels from Netherlands-headquartered Brava TV Group, which operate in dozens of countries.
In 2017, it acquired C Music Entertainment, 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 private radio broadcaster.
Today, Stingray operates North America’s largest retail audio advertising network, delivering audio messaging at 30,000 retail locations. And in 2021, Stingray signed a deal with Amazon to bring a number of music channels to Amazon Prime Video. The company also has streaming entertainment deals with Xfinity and Roku.
Stingray says that it has long-standing relationships with over 300 music labels, publishers, and studios including “Sony Music, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, BMG, Kobalt, and Mercury Studios, as well as many independent content providers”.
“This new financing greatly enhances our current liquidity and provides optionality for additional commitments as we continue to evaluate and capitalize on market opportunities.”
Eric Boyko, Stingray
But its hottest product in the past few years has been the Stingray Karaoke app driven (pardon the pun) by Tesla, which became the first EV maker to add an in-car karaoke app to its vehicles.
Other EV makers have since jumped on board, including China’s BYD, which signed a deal in 2023 to bring the Stingray Karaoke app to its cars sold overseas.
Most recently, Stingray signed a deal with Ford to bring karaoke to the carmaker’s all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck and Mustang Mach-E. The app will be available for download later for other models that have the Ford and Lincoln Digital Experience, including the 2025 Ford Explorer, 2025 Lincoln Navigator, 2025 Lincoln Aviator, and 2025 Lincoln Nautilus.
Users of the karaoke app have access to a wide range of music genres, from rock and country to Latin Music, K-pop, and J-pop.
Stingray stresses the safety features included in the karaoke app – for example, the fact that scrolling lyrics are not available to the driver while the car is running.
And the karaoke isn’t limited to cars. In October, Stingray announced the feature would now be available on Vizio TVs. A month later, it announced the feature would be coming to Roblox.
“Stingray is committed to innovating the way people experience music and entertainment, serving millions of users across different platforms, from apps to in-car entertainment systems, ” said Rick Bergan, Head of Content Distribution US at Stingray.
In its latest earnings report, for the quarter ended September 30, Stingray reported a 13.4% YoY jump in revenue, to CAD $93.6 million (USD $68.6 million at the average exchange rate for Q3).
The company’s adjusted EBITDA rose 15.2% YoY to CAD $34.0 million (USD $24.9 million).
Boyko said the growth was led by its FAST (Free Ad-Supported TV Streaming) channel and retail media segments. He noted the company created “a whole new revenue stream” through a partnership with Xperi/TiVo that brought eight new channels of in-car entertainment to backseat screens in BMW Group vehicles.
“This premium video offering will be extended to other luxury car manufacturers in upcoming quarters as we position Stingray as a supplier of choice in this market,” Boyko said.
The company reports that 2.5 million cars have its entertainment content on board and that it counts 400 million viewers and listeners across all of its services.Music Business Worldwide
