Sounder Launches Podcast Management Platform to Help Creators Grow Revenue and Audience Base

New York NY, USA—Sounder today announced the launch of its podcast management platform, an end-to-end solution designed in collaboration with podcast creators to facilitate podcast hosting, transcription, distribution, monetization and measurement. The company, founded by former Google and Spotify executives, aims to bring discoverability to the exploding market for audio content through its patent-pending Pinpoint Audio Search technology, which enables consumers to locate and share precise moments in any podcast through simple text search.

Sounder’s launch brings free podcast hosting, transcription and Pinpoint Audio Search—a first in the market—to podcast creators around the world. Sounder’s platform is built with creators, not just for creators, with the goal of helping them find, grow and monetize their audiences. The platform provides industry-leading analytics for creators, including audience insights such as downloads by date, device type, browser, geographic distribution of listeners and top traffic referrers. In the coming months, creators will be able to edit their podcasts directly within the platform, as well as opt in to monetize their content through select partner demand-side platforms (DSPs). The platform’s Pinpoint Audio Search technology is currently offered via a licensing fee to large-scale publishers and platforms.

“We’re experiencing a renaissance in audio, as voice becomes a new mode of discovery and streaming becomes mainstream,” said Dan Daugherty, COO and co-founder of Sounder. “Through our Pinpoint Audio Search technology, we’re making millions of podcasts instantly searchable, drastically increasing their appeal to consumers, their shelf life to individual creators and large media publishers and their relevance to advertisers.”

Podcast discovery is an industry-wide challenge, with different platforms and publishers employing different mechanisms for surfacing relevant content. Even so, no one has been able to solve the problem of in-episode search at scale. Instead, to find a particular moment within a podcast, users typically scroll, or “scrub,” with their fingers on smartphone devices or bookmark points within an episode. The ability to share precise locations within a podcast with others has traditionally been similarly challenging and an entirely manual process. Through a proprietary method of indexing, Sounder has solved this challenge, enabling precise audio search at scale.

“Search is a universal behavior, and until now, it hasn’t existed for podcasts,” said Kal Amin, CEO and co-founder of Sounder. “Given the significant investment being made into the audio ecosystem and the exponential growth in content creation, consumer behavior to pinpoint specific content moments within audio content will become increasingly critical. Through our new Pinpoint Audio Search technology, we’re making the content infinitely more discoverable, which will dramatically improve the user experience and make it easier for creators to grow and understand their audience. Today, our technology is being deployed for podcasts, but we’re building a solution that will make all audio content, including voice content, better for everyone.”

Publishers may integrate Sounder’s Pinpoint Search technology directly into their platforms via an API. Users can enter search terms as they would for any other type of content, receive a list of relevant audio results and click to be taken to the exact point in the audio feed where those terms are mentioned.

Sounder’s founding team has a long track record in both audio content and vertical search. Amin was previously VP of global business operations at Spotify, SVP global business operations and GM of Ad.com Sponsored Listings at AOL, director of global market development at Google and most recently served as COO of content discovery platform Flipboard. Daugherty was CEO and co-founder of Rentbits, a pioneer in real estate search and one of Inc.’s 500 Fastest Growing Private Companies in America, as well as served as a sales and operations lead at Google. CTO Goran Krgovic previously ran vertical search technology development for DashLocal and Verteez. Sounder’s advisors include Jeff Levick, CEO of The Players’ Tribune and former CRO of Spotify, and Shiva Rajaraman, CTO of WeWork and former VP of product at Spotify and director of product at Google.

ABOUT SOUNDER

Sounder is an end-to-end podcast management platform that helps creators grow their listener base and revenue. Launched in 2019, Sounder aims to make audio experiences better for everyone. Its patent-pending Pinpoint Audio Search technology makes it easy to find and share precise locations within millions of podcast episodes. Learn more and sign up for free hosting and transcription at sounder.fm.