When Dan, Goran, and I launched Sounder in 2019, we were focused on helping audio creators of all sizes accelerate the growth of their podcasts—both in terms of listeners and revenues. We wrote down our true north on the back of a napkin: “Make every creator successful by building discovery and monetization tools that support an open and thriving creator ecosystem.”
In the span of the last three years, our team delivered on this mission—and built like crazy. We launched a podcasting platform used by thousands of creators. We enabled creators to monetize with both programmatic and direct dynamically served ads. We released tools to help drive audio SEO, increase production efficiency, and improve audience engagement. We built proprietary automatic speech recognition that created hundreds of thousands of transcripts. We created artificial intelligence technology that’s fast, accurate, reliable, and scalable.
Over that same period of time, we also connected with hundreds of stakeholders across the industry. In every conversation, one message continued to ring loud: Stakeholders are looking for actionable data and insights to help them make business decisions and transactions with confidence.
Coming out of the commercial partnerships we signed this year with iHeartMedia, Audacy, DAX, SpokenLayer, Audiohook, and BAM Strategy, we see an exciting opportunity to help everyone achieve more with data and insights. During our team’s Q3 offsite we identified what makes Sounder special—our team and our tech. To be a catalyst that accelerates innovation, connectivity, and revenue growth for the industry, we are doubling down our investments on the most pressing opportunity in audio. Going forward, Sounder will focus all of its energy on one thing: building data solutions that service the audio industry.
Data fuels growth. We’ve seen it time and time again across every industry. When stakeholders gain access to the right insights, it unlocks a new frontier of opportunity. At Sounder, we’ve built the technology and tools to make this a reality across audio.
In turn, we’ve adjusted our mission to reflect this new purpose. Sounder’s new mission is to make it simple for organizations to use trustworthy audio data, enabling the confidence to make decisions and act. We’re excited to provide solutions that can address some of the known gaps that exist across the industry.
Sounder exists to usher in this data-powered transformation for audio. In turn, the industry will grow faster than ever. Now that publishers, marketers, and ad marketplaces have access to the insights they need, we will see better decision-making, improved product experiences, stronger advertising performance, increased efficiencies, and superior listener engagement.
We are centering our efforts around the data solutions required to unlock monetization for the audio industry—building automated tools such as brand safety, brand suitability, and contextual targeting that increase transparency and confidence for marketers.
We will have more to share in the coming weeks about our company evolution. The team and I could not be more excited to lean into all the exciting innovation that is happening in audio, especially as it relates to how stakeholders leverage data to power their business decisions.
About Kal Amin
Kal Amin is Sounder’s Co-founder and CEO. He has spent 20+ years in the media and technology space and has held executive roles at some of the leading global technology platforms. Prior to Sounder, Kal previously served as the VP of Global Business Operations at Spotify, GM of Sponsored Listings at AOL, Director of Global Market Development at Google, and most recently as the COO of content curation platform Flipboard.
Kal Amin
Kal Amin is Sounder’s Co-founder and CEO. He has spent 20+ years in the media and technology space and has held executive roles at some of the leading global technology platforms. Prior to Sounder, Kal previously served as the VP of Global Business Operations at Spotify, GM of Sponsored Listings at AOL, Director of Global Market Development at Google, and most recently as the COO of content curation platform Flipboard.
