Article17 Aug 2017 10:59
08.16.17
reinventing music
Sheryl Crow Wants You To Stop Ignoring Your Family And Start Singing Karaoke
The singer-songwriter is promoting an unusual music streaming box with a feature that lets you belt out your favorites in your living room.
Sheryl Crow Wants You To Stop Ignoring Your Family And Start Singing Karaoke
By John Paul Titlow3 minute Read
When she’s not soaking up the sun or otherwise trying to have some fun, Sheryl Crow can reliably be found in one place: at home in Nashville, where she spends her days in the studio writing new songs and by night, unwinding at home with her two kids. But compared to the house the multi-Grammy-winning, lifelong musician was raised in, Crow’s place is a world apart: It’s way quieter.
“I grew up when music was a real social experience and also with parents who played music in the house all the time. I can vividly remember Mom and Dad having people over and dancing in the living room,” Crow says. “That has sort of died.”
For many of us, the quiet isolation of home life is heightened by our addiction to connected gadgets. Crow’s kids, aged 7 and 10, aren’t yet old enough to get sucked into the mindless distraction of smartphone screens, but Crow knows that in a few years, they’ll likely feel the lure of the blue light of screens. So she’s hoping to preempt it.
The fear of an antisocial, tech-dependent generation is a common (and undoubtedly valid) one, but it also happens to be a talking point for a new product that Crow is promoting. U.K.-based startup Electric Jukebox—in which the singer-songwriter and a few other celebrities are investors—is making its U.S. debut with the ROXI, a music streaming box that connects to your TV. In addition to a Spotify-style, all-you-can-stream library of music that you can search using your voice, the ROXI offers on-screen music trivia games and, thanks to a remote that doubles as a microphone, karaoke.
The ROXI music streaming TV box by Electric Jukebox.
“In its sneaky way, this makes music more social again,” Crow says. “It takes everybody off their phones and puts them into a participatory experience. My kids are going to totally dig it.”
The ROXI also comes with a Sound Machine feature that streams meditation-friendly sounds and slumber-inducing white noise, as well as a selection of playlists curated by Electric Jukebox investors like Crow, Robbie Williams, and Stephen Fry. But let’s be real: It’s the karaoke screen that’s going get most people excited.
Crow says that if anything, she’s afraid she’ll have trouble prying her kids away from the ROXI, especially when it’s in karaoke mode. “But that’s great,” she says. “I’ll be able to subliminally introduce them to the music that I feel are the important
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