I have an aversion to karaoke after the band I used to play in was entirely upstaged at a gig by a karaoke machine, but, as pastimes go, it remains a huge market. And where markets are big, startups like to go.
Enter Finland’s Singa, which is building a digital karaoke service that, in its own words, wants to do for karaoke what Spotify has done for music. The Helsinki-based company has recently scored €1.75 million in seed funding led by Initial Capital, with participation from Tamares Holdings, Superhero Capital, Reaktor Ventures and Tekes.
“Over my 10 years in the karaoke industry running Karaoke World Championships, I worked with big and small karaoke companies all over the world, from Asia to the U.S., and gained insight into the industry and saw that while most other entertainment media were moving towards streaming, karaoke was still stuck in the 90s,” Singa co-founder and CEO Atte Hujanen tells me.
“This was a huge disservice to karaoke singers and represented a massive opportunity for a company that understood both the industry and software-led disruption”.
To that end, Singa currently comes in two versions: For consumers, the Helsinki startup offers native iOS, Android, Web, Apple TV & SmartTV…