It's not yet exactly clear what the new entity will be, either than promoting the member company's products as an integrated - and we assume compatible - solution for musicians and music producers. So, clearly this is nothing to do with iZotope's leading audio software tools used by audio engineers, audio editors and sound designers. Soundwide is totally focused on the musician market with a likely convergence on hardware, which Native Instruments has been pioneering, aside from being a software powerhouse for sampling and music creation.
According to the launch announcement, Native Instruments and iZotope have introduced Soundwide as the new name of their parent company, while at the same time welcoming "several new members to the Soundwide group of brands." The announcement also says that while "Soundwide houses the two industry-leading companies in one unified group," the organization will see the popular audio plugin platform Plugin Alliance (California) and audio software company Brainworx (Germany), both founded by Dirk Ulrich, who currently leads the two successful companies.
Soundwide is said to promote "a collective vision to inspire and empower creators to express themselves and reimagine the future of sound." More interestingly, the new entity is said to be working on "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."
The two companies owned by Dirk Ulrich will provide a platform to sell plug-ins and eventually create new ones, since Brainworx specializes in high-end software emulations of analog hardware. In the Plugin Alliance website, Ulrich explains that the creation of Soundwide doesn't mean the end for the member companies, and that it's all about creating "a new platform". "2022 will be our busiest year ever...," he says, adding: "Lots of exciting Native Instruments and iZotope products will soon be available via the Plugin Alliance, just like we will add some of our products to popular Native Instruments and iZotope offerings."
On the product development side, the Soundwide strategy is also reinforced by two important names, Sound Stacks CTO Cesare Ferrari and Julian Storer, the creator of the industry-standard open-source audio application framework JUCE. Both share a common past wit leading roles at Roli, Tracktion Software. Their new company, Sound Stacks will drive the development of new audio platform technologies for Soundwide, "aimed at improving productivity and performance for audio developers across the industry."
Soundwide’s mission is described as "to make music and audio creation a more joyful and inspiring experience for creators everywhere by helping them to find, and stay in, their creative flow," and "to inspire and empower creators to express themselves and reimagine the future of sound." Towards those goals, it becomes clear that Soundwide will apply its engineering capabilities across integrated software and hardware, AI and machine learning, cloud, and more.
In order to execute on this mission, Soundwide has also formed a new Artist Board, recruiting famous musicians and producers, which together have won 29 Grammy Awards (from 77 nominations). These musicians and producers will be advising Soundwide at a regular cadence and provide "critical guidance on creator needs, product roadmaps, community development, and new methods of fostering inclusive communities in the music industry."
Leading Soundwide we find also Jonathan Bailey, previously leading the R&D and Product Management teams at iZotope, and now acting as Chief Technology Officer for Soundwide, and Mark Cattini, which was recruited from Salesforce already back in October 2021, and is now the Chief Executive Officer at Soundwide. In total, the new entity will employ more than 600 staff, with offices across EMEA, NA and APAC regions.
www.native-instruments.com
www.izotope.com
www.plugin-alliance.com
www.brainworx.audio
www.joinsoundwide.com
