Last Updated on: 16th July 2023, 05:07 pm
I may be wrong, but I’m going to go ahead and guess that the folks who decided that what the world could really use right now is a Karaoke machine for the car have never, at any point in any of their lives, spent a single moment trapped in an enclosed space with another human being. It sounds like it might be sort of fun for a few minutes until the novelty wears off, but what an awful, awful idea.
A company called Singing Machine has been working with Stingray (I assume the same Stingray that owns radio stations and is responsible for those music channels on your cable and satellite in Canada) to convince car manufacturers to include the system in their vehicles.
On the singer’s side, the device itself is just your average stick mic, but all the other systems would need to be built into the vehicle. This includes the karaoke menu and the ability to connect the mic to your speakers—Singing Machine is currently reaching out to car manufacturers about this.
Caras integrated with the Stingray will let users in the driver’s seat see lyrics on an internal screen, but only when the vehicle is in park. Otherwise, a passenger can connect to the car to get the lyrics on their phone when they’re in motion. These sort of safety features are perhaps why the device can’t just work on any car using, say, an Android app.
Of course, nothing stops users from passing the mic to the driver’s seat to go off songs by memory. Also, a driver could simply load the lyrics on their own phone while in motion.
No matter how hard they may try, I don’t think there’s any way to possibly make this safe. Not only for all the reasons mentioned above, but because what, aside from your own dwindling restraint, is going to stop you from strangling the first person who starts in on Let it Go or Baby Shark for the 34th time completely to death?
And did I mention that Singing Machine says that it can autotune and add other effects to your voice? Forget 34th. What I actually meant is 3rd or 4th.
But this is just the sort of thing that might be irresistible to car makers who are looking for every possible way to monetize aspects of the vehicle experience, so I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before someone gives it a go. Just remember that singing along with the radio has always been free.
