Emerging Entrepreneurs Awards: Soundways radically updating music industry’s supply chain

Gebre Waddell, CEO and co-founder of Sound Credit

Peter Hurley

By Corey Davis - Reporter

March 02, 2021, 07:00am CST Updated 08/16/2021 7:14 pm

It may be a stretch to call Gebre Waddell a rising businessman.

The 39-year-old Memphis native is already firmly established as a difference-maker in the music industry.

Waddell is cofounder and CEO of Soundways Inc., an audio technology company established in 2016 that focuses on the music supply chain. He works alongside his cofounder, Connor Reviere, who also serves as chief technology officer.

Soundways is primarly known for Sound Credit, a software platform it created in 2018 that helps songwriters, musicians, and sound engineers get credit for the songs they’ve worked on.

Sound Credit’s collection and publishing platform has users in more than 64 countries.

“There is $1.4 billion in unpaid music royalties every year, largely because the music industry has never had a system for collecting credit and delivering that through its supply chain,” Waddell said. “We were the first company to do that. It was the most viral music software release in music history.”

Waddell has seen other breakthroughs in his career. In 2020, he was elected to the national board of trustees for the Recording Academy and was president of its Memphis chapter. The 40-seat Recording Academy board includes stars such as Yolanda Adams, John Legend, and PJ Morton and is the organization behind the Grammy Awards.

He was also appointed by Tenn. Gov. Bill Lee to the Tennessee Entertainment Commission in 2019.

In May 2018, Soundways beat out eight local startups in a pitch competition at Clayborn Temple in Memphis. There, Soundways was awarded a total investment of $200,000 from AOL cofounder Steve Case’s Rise of the Rest Tour, led by venture firm Revolution Inc.

At the event, Case described Soundways as a company that is “of Memphis, from Memphis, that can really help Memphis rise again.”

The Revolution fund investors included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The money Sound Credit received was matched by Memphis-based venture capital firm, Innova Capital.

In March 2019, Waddell appeared on “60 Minutes” as part of a feature on the Revolution fund and its investment in Sound Credit. That segment further helped build the company’s brand and increase its overall exposure.

Waddell said about 80% of venture capital goes to companies in California, New York, and Massachusetts, while the rest of the states must battle over what’s left.

Waddell has a goal to help establish Memphis as a tech city, which was something he envisioned when he started Soundways.

Even before he established the firm, Waddell had already made a name for himself as a mover and shaker in the music industry.

In 2003, Waddell — a graduate of the University of Memphis — established a mastering studio, Stonebridge Mastering, in Downtown Memphis. Waddell’s mastering credits include artists such as Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, Public Enemy, Ministry, George Clinton, the Bar-Kays, and David Porter.

In 2013, Waddell wrote the book “Complete Audio Mastering: Practical Techniques” which was published by McGraw-Hill Education.

Also that year, Waddell developed Refinement, an audio processor for controlling the sensation of harshness in audio signals. He licensed it to audio brand giants Brainworx and Universal Audio. Refinement was released in 2014 as the first audio plug-in simultaneously released across all available plug-in platforms.

“It became the best-selling mastery software under their brands for three years. But, I just didn’t want to continue to license software to other companies,” Waddell said. “I wanted to start something in Memphis and to show that tech had the ability to happen here in my hometown. … We started the plug-ins and then later found this opportunity with music credits and never knew it was going to be this big.