Berlin, April 12, 2022 — Today, Soundwide, the newly named parent company of premier brands Native Instruments and iZotope, announced the appointment of an Artist Board to contribute to the brand’s mission to empower and inspire creators. The Board includes some of the world’s most innovative and accomplished musicians and producers, including singer-songwriter Alicia Keys, recording and mix engineer Ann Mincieli, producer and rapper EL-P of Run the Jewels, musician/producer/composer Jacob Collier, composer Ludwig Göransson, producer and engineer Noah “40” Shebib, production duo Take A Daytrip, singer-songwriter Tayla Parx, and producer and engineer Young Guru, all of whom have meaningful relationships within the Soundwide group. The news comes alongside the expansion of Soundwide brands through the addition of Plugin Alliance and Brainworx.
Soundwide champions audio at all levels to inspire and empower creators to express themselves as they reimagine the future of sound. The Artist Board will advise Soundwide with the goal to empower the community, listen to what creators want and need, and work to improve the overall health of the music industry. Through the establishment of the Artist Board, Soundwide endeavors to center diverse perspectives and establish a creator-community-to-company pipeline for feedback on product development. Going forward, Soundwide will look to the Artist Board to provide insight, guidance and new ways of working to foster an inclusive community that welcomes all creators.
Collectively, the Artist Board has won 29 GRAMMY awards (from 77 nominations), and their own recorded music has amassed over 10B streams on YouTube and Spotify alone. The records they’ve produced, engineered, and written extend exponentially beyond that, including some of the most impactful music of the past decade from Adele to Ariana Grande to Jay-Z. Soundwide’s Board members have over 100M combined social followers and are respected within the industry for innovation and quality in every aspect of music creation.
Soundwide CEO Mark Cattini explains, “Going forward, we’re asking ourselves: ‘What do our community members need to tap into their ultimate creative workflow and how can we help get them there?.’ By first uncovering and understanding our community’s needs, we can map out our goals and move one step closer to the future of sound. Soundwide’s Artist Board provides a unique opportunity to offer up more seats at the table and collaborate with board members to bring new voices into the conversation.”
Soundwide’s goal is to make music creation a more joyful and inspiring experience for creators everywhere by helping them to find, and stay in, their creative flow. Premier brands Native Instruments and iZotope, who joined forces in 2021, will continue to live on as product brands under Soundwide, sharing a collective vision to inspire and empower creators to express themselves and reimagine the future of sound. The introduction of Soundwide establishes the foundation to build the most diverse and integrated ecosystem for audio creation. Now hosting a user base of upwards of 10M, the parent company will help customers benefit from the combination of different brands, the more integrated product portfolio, the increased value and the enhanced user experience Soundwide brings together.
Now joining Soundwide in that shared vision is Plugin Alliance and Brainworx, two companies founded by CEO Dirk Ulrich and staffed by 60 employees across the US and Germany. As a platform, Plugin Alliance offers creators flexibility and choice in selecting the right tools for their work and offers industry partners a sales, marketing, and delivery platform to over 1 million user accounts. Brainworx is the flagship contributor of products to the marketplace, with a specialty in high-end software emulations of analog hardware from their international network of partners.
Alongside these new additions, Soundwide welcomes the newly formed Sound Stacks, born from the minds of Cesare Ferrari and Julian Storer, the creator of the industry-standard open-source audio application framework JUCE. Sound Stacks will drive the development of new audio platform technologies aimed at improving productivity and performance for audio developers across the industry.
