The Promise of Digital Audio Tech

What’s the responsibility of a technology business at the center of digital audio?

Podcasting and internet radio were founded on the idea that everyone has a “voice” that deserves to be heard, whether that’s offering a perspective on local news, spinning your favorite songs, or any of the other million use cases in between. And if they choose to, those voices also deserve to earn a living from the value they provide.

It follows, then, that if you’ve put yourself in charge of building technology that provides the infrastructure to serve those voices, you should be building it in a way that opens up more opportunity for everyone. Call it responsible audio tech.

Everything SoundStack established last year, and everything we’ll develop this year, is grounded in that mission, making it easier to get the most out of big tech, and to connect with any partner that’s going to help you grow. 

You saw it in two major product launches in ‘22.

Letting audio publishers control their audio infrastructure across a global content delivery network is a complex ball of wax. SoundStack Engine leaves the complexity to us, with a UI and API that makes it simple for the publisher. 

Similarly, our proprietary Dynamic Audio Server (DAS) was built to handle hundreds of thousands of listeners while focusing on ad insertion and ad decisioning in podcasts and live audio streams. It already serves everyone from tens of millions of monthly unique users to some very large podcast publishers and hosting platforms.

You saw it in several major partnerships.

Our integration with Blubrry finally made it easy for podcasters of any size to earn ad revenue from their shows with access to dozens of advertisers in SoundStack Marketplace. Our partnership with Zeno Media connected listeners around the world with their communities back home, giving Zeno’s global podcasters a simple way to have their shows hosted, delivered, and earning revenue immediately. 

On the Live365 side of our house, our partnership with TuneIn helped broadcasters grow their audiences with access to over 30 million listeners with TuneIn On Air.

You saw it in the development of our own business.

We consolidated a number of legacy businesses into a single entity to make it easier for customers to get everything they need in one place and help them understand how the myriad functions of digital audio all work together. 

We called it SoundStack :). And we defined the category AaaS (audio-as-a-service), because it’s funny, it’s true, and we are Bad-AaaS.

We expanded our team—from 21 people at the end of ‘21 to over 70 Stackers today—ensuring that we have enough of the right people to both help our customers succeed, and help raise the digital audio market for everyone.

And it only gets better in 2023.

This year, we’ll continue to accelerate the open ecosystem for live radio stations and podcasters, enabling them to connect to any third-party SSP or ad server with SoundStack Connectors, which some of you are experiencing already. We’ll also launch an intuitive dashboard for streamlined reporting across audio. We’ll be out on the road talking to you about it personally and on the best stages in podcasting/radio. 

So here’s to a great year of responsible digital audio that makes this space better for everyone. Hold us to it.