The next battleground for digital entertainment might not be the television in the living room — it could be the dashboard. Stingray, the Montreal-based media company best known for music channels and audio services, is pushing deeper into automobiles with karaoke, music, podcasts and other interactive entertainment products as car manufacturers increasingly treat the cabin as another connected media environment. “Karaoke sells cars,” Jim Riley, the U.S. Division President for Stingray, said in an interview with The Desk at the StreamTV Show in Denver earlier this summer. The comment sounds playful, but Stingray is treating the opportunity seriously: Riley said the company’s karaoke product is available or being introduced across nearly 15 automotive manufacturers, with additional launches planned. The service can be adapted depending on the vehicle, including configurations that restrict the main dashboard screen while a car is moving but allow passengers to keep interacting through their phones. Some integrations can also work with microphones inside the vehicle, allowing passengers to sing, receive scores and potentially participate in broader interactive experiences. Certain versions of Stingray’s karaoke experience allows passengers to accrue a score and compete against each other; in the future, they may be able to compete with other cars on the road. The demand is particularly pronounced among Chinese automobile manufacturers expanding into markets outside China, Riley said. Those automakers often enter international markets with an expectation that karaoke will be part of the connected-car experience, creating an opportunity for Stingray because of its ability to license music across numerous countries. “Rights is one of our superpowers,” Riley proclaimed. Stingray has built a karaoke library of roughly 100,000 songs and continues adding music, Riley said. Because the company works across international markets, it can develop localized catalogs for places that might be too small or complicated for competitors