Photo Credit: Nicolas J Leclercq
ROXi, a music video app designed for smart televisions, has raised about $8.7 million as it prepares to expand into the United States.
London-based ROXi’s multimillion-dollar raise entered the media spotlight in a recent Daily Mail report. At the time of this writing, however, the Simon Cowell-backed (and Samsung-partnered) app didn’t appear to have addressed the matter with a formal release.
In any event, Alexander Armstrong, who hosts BBC’s Pointless as well as a Classic FM show, is said to have made a “significant” contribution to ROXi’s just-revealed £7 million ($8.66 million) round. U2 bassist Adam Clayton, along with his group’s former manager Paul McGuinness, also reportedly contributed to the roughly $8.7 million raise, which has upped ROXi’s total investor support to £32 million ($39.60 million), per the Mail.
ROXi likewise counts as backers Robbie Williams, Kylie Minogue, and Sheryl Crow, among others, and is equipped with north of 90 million music videos, some 400,000 karaoke tracks, and select “music games,” according to its website. Available only to United Kingdom residents at present, the app is set to use this newest tranche to bankroll an expansion into the States, the aforesaid report indicated.
Execs have long acknowledged a desire to bring the offering to the US, and should the service crack certain “growth targets” while spearheading the buildout, a debut on the public market could be in the cards in the approaching years, according once again to the Mail.
Though it’s unclear exactly how many users (and how much revenue) ROXi currently boasts, fans can access the app’s ad-supported tier and paid version (£6.99/$8.65 per month) via Amazon’s Fire TV line, Google TV and Android TV units, and other smart televisions yet.
Also worth noting is that ROXi sells a karaoke microphone, which the appropriate product description says “works straight out of the box with any TV,” for £29.99/$37.11 (with free shipping) on its website.
Of course, the availability of a relatively low-cost mic, in coordination with the inherent presentation advantages associated with playing solely from big-screen televisions, could potentially give ROXi a competitive edge over Spotify, Apple Music, and others in the karaoke department.
Meanwhile, notwithstanding the widespread accessibility of music videos (including on YouTube), ROXi isn’t the only app that’s delivering the media to smart TV users; Vevo added several live channels to Hulu in 2022, whereas Warner Music’s WMX artist-services division went ahead and rolled out a trio of ad-supported channels on Roku.