Stingray Group Inc. RAY-A-T, a Canadian music and technology company, has struck a deal with Chinese auto manufacturer BYD Co. Ltd. BYDDY to provide karaoke services for its electric vehicles.
The deal will put Stingray’s karaoke platform in 300,000 additional cars in Western Europe, Latin America and Australia – a 10-per-cent boost on the company’s existing three million subscriptions. Stingray receives a fee per active user per month.
It’s music to the ears of many in Southeast Asia, where singing in the car has become a cultural phenomenon: BYD cars come equipped with two karaoke microphones built into the centre console, said Mathieu Péloquin, Stingray’s chief marketing officer.
Users can choose from 100,000 songs on their dashboard screens and mobile devices, toggle lead voices on and off, and queue songs to play automatically. As a safety precaution, lyrics are not visible on the dashboard screen while the car is moving.
BYD, headquartered in Shenzhen, is one of the world’s largest electric-vehicle makers, and also produces a range of vehicles with facilities around the world, including an electric-bus facility in Newmarket, Ont. Originally founded as a rechargeable-battery manufacturer, the company has been buoyed by a global surge in interest in EVs, attracting large investments from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
The sale is the latest in Stingray’s expansion of services to the automotive world, and joins similar partnerships with Tesla Inc., Audi and VinFast LLC, a Vietnamese electric-car manufacturer.
Montreal-based Stingray offers an in-car karaoke platform and large library of songs as part of its broad range of business, which also includes radio stations, television broadcasting and retail audio and advertising. The company was founded based on its 2007 acquisition of Soundchoice, a karaoke platform and song database, for $6-million, and today is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange with a market cap of nearly $260-million.
In-vehicle entertainment centres have become popular in recent years as new car models have included large touch screens with internet access. Advocacy groups, including the American Automobile Association, have said that access to this in-car technology increases the risk of distracted driving.
BYD has been at the centre of several controversies over the past several years. In February, the company’s Japanese subsidiary acknowledged that it had used hexavalent chromium, a highly toxic carcinogen, in anti-rust treatments for some of its electric buses in that country. The company later said the substances were not a danger to public health but that it would detoxify and scrap those vehicles.
And last December, a preliminary U.S. Department of Commerce probe accused four companies, including BYD’s Hong Kong subsidiary, of allegedly circumventing tariffs on solar panels by shipping them through Southeast Asia.
BYD could not be reached for comment.