About us

Build for the audio publisher and everyone wins.

Independence frees us to put you first.

Without a doubt, many of the big media-owned tech businesses provide myriad benefits to the market – solid technology, scale, and more. But it’s also inherent in the way they’re set up that they need to focus on the interests of their parent companies too. As an independent, SoundStack is guided only by what delivers the best results for our 14k+ partners.

Specifically, that means we can:

  1. Be a real partner to publishers – collaborate closely and be transparent about everything happening behind the scenes and across the supply chain; help you reestablish trust in your tech provider.

  2. Make doing business simple – provide comprehensive, easy-to-use tools for both podcast and streaming in one place; make it easy to work with any other tech you want and/or build on our platform (we’re tech-agnostic); promote industry standards.

  3. Build technology based on what pubs really need – the ability to connect to massive amounts of advertising demand, forge direct connections to earn more revenue; flexibility; true transparency into what is and isn't working. 

When you support great content and ensure the publisher’s business stays healthy, the whole ecosystem benefits, because everyone – from advertiser to listener – is dependent on that content.

How we got here

When he was 15, SoundStack’s CEO Jon Stephenson formed EmpireStreaming, headquartered out of his parents’ basement in Hermitage, PA. Over the past 15 years, he and the team have built this business from a one man startup to a consistent award winner of the Inc 5000 fastest growing companies in America. Jon acquired Live365 (under the holding company Media Creek) in 2018.

In 2022, EmpireStreaming was rebranded to SoundStack, an audio-as-a-service company powering delivery, monetization, and insights for businesses of every stripe and size – podcasters, broadcasters, advertisers, buy-side platforms, media representation companies, and more.

In aggregate, SoundStack distributes content to tens of millions of end-users daily, and generates over six billion monthly ad opportunities, with a growing team of 70+ full-time individuals around the world, with headquarters in Pittsburgh, PA.

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