SoundStack, a Pittsburgh-based audio-as-a-service platform, officially celebrated its launch as well as the debut of its flagship product, the SoundStack Engine, which is vying to be the audio industry's premier tool that automates and supports streaming, podcasting and monetization efforts via a single user interface.
The emergence of SoundStack comes following the merging of several other related companies; Abovecast, Audio Catapult, EmpireStreaming, Live365 and Media Creek — which combined had over 12,000 publishers using their services. It has a full-time staff of 51 people, nine of whom reside and work in Pittsburgh while the others work remotely.
"SoundStack is audio infrastructure for the internet," CEO and founder Jon Stephenson said. "If you think about when you're listening to an internet radio station or any radio station rather, or listening to a podcast that's delivered through the internet, you need a way to deliver that to the end user, which is the listener.
"On top of that, which is another big, unique selling proposition of our company is we focus on monetization; you have all this great content, how are you going to monetize it?" Stephenson explained that the comes down to the ads that are specific to the listener. "There is also another layer on top of that that we focus on making sure that the user experience is very optimal so ads can be baked into the content and delivered to the end user all seamlessly without any latency or any issues there."
Stephenson first got involved with audio production in 2004 as a fourth-grader, where he, with the assistance of his father, built a low-power transmitter to conduct his own local radio broadcasts with a radius the size of about an acre. Come 2006, he took this hobby to the internet and continued to network with others in the audio broadcasting industry.
He continued to fund the expansion of this hobby by designing websites on the side, saving and building those reserves to use as seed money for what amounts to SoundStack today, though it went under the name of EmpireStreaming at the time. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, Stephenson acquired the assets to a popular streaming platform Live365 in 2016, which lets users make their own radio stations.
SoundStack hasn't taken on any outside investments, nor is it looking to do so soon, Stephenson said. The company is hiring for a vice president of marketing and will be posting other roles later this year. Stephenson declined to provide revenue figures.
"We are completely bootstrapped," Stephenson said. "Because we are fully bootstrapped, we are able to kind of dictate where we want to go as a company, which is really awesome. We're not searching for investment funding at this point. It's not off the table. But we are very healthy in terms of revenue growth, in terms of cash on hand."
