| Eric Boyko | |
| Birth Place: | Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
| Alma Mater: | McGill University |
| Occupation: | Founder, president & CEO, Stingray Group Inc. (2007-present) |
| Years Active: | 1991–present |
Eric Boyko (born 1970)[1] is a Canadian tech entrepreneur and the founder, president and CEO of Stingray Group.
Boyko was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, to a Quebecois mother and Ukrainian father.[2] He earned a bachelor of commerce degree from McGill University in 1992,[3] and became a certified general accountant in 1997.[4]
Boyko started his first business, Campus Gourmet, in 1991 at the age of 19. The company sold precooked meals to students at McGill University.[2] [5] He then founded the online fundraising company Universal Fundraising Group with a $2,000 loan from the Business Development Bank of Canada.[2] It was rebranded as eFundraising.com in 1998,[5] and sold to ZapMe in 2000 for $25 million.[6]
In 2007, Boyko and Alexandre Taillefer founded digital music provider Stingray Digital Media Group, with Boyko serving as president and CEO since the company's inception.[7] [8] The company sells commercial-free music streams to cable and satellite television providers to add to their subscribers' packages, as well as a music streaming app and an online service for consumers and businesses.[9] Unlike many of its streaming music competitors, Stingray uses human curators rather than algorithms to generate playlists.[10] It was launched with the $6 million purchase of karaoke company Soundchoice, which was then renamed The Karaoke Channel. A year later, Stingray purchased music-streaming TV channel Galaxie from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for $65 million, and renamed it Stingray Music.
The company went public on June 3, 2015, on the Toronto Stock Exchange.[11]
In December 2018, the company officially changed its name to Stingray Group, Inc.