You may have only heard about Soundwide thanks to their generous offer of free plug-ins that you could score for a limited time, but the new entity is actually a long culmination of events. So what exactly is Soundwide?

First a little backstory to bring everyone up to speed. Native Instruments was formed in Berlin by Stephan Schmitt and Volker Hinz in 1996. Soon afterward, Native Instruments innovated real-time sound synthesis on consumer computers via a modular synth environment with their first product, Generator (later renamed Reaktor in 1998). The product caused a sensation at MusikMesse, Germany’s equivalent of NAMM, when it debuted and attracted several engineers who wanted to be part of this exciting new computer synthesis movement. Bernd Roggendorf (whose name you may recognize, since he went on later to start Ableton), was one of the new programmers to join Native and happened to be a close friend of Daniel Haver. Bernd recommended the business-minded Haver to Schmitt, who was overwhelmed with the operational aspects of the rapidly growing company, which consisted entirely of software engineers at the time. Haver came on board the following year and took the helm as Chief Executive Officer.

Mate Galic joined Native Instruments in 1999 and instantly developed a symbiotic relationship with Daniel Haver. They led the company together leveraging their friendship, complementary skill sets and pursuit of innovation to push Native into new music production and performance categories and continued growth into new markets, including digital DJing, guitar effects and beatmaking.

In 2017, EMH Partners invested €50 million into Native Instruments, followed by another investment in 2020, which gave EMH a majority stake in the company. The investment drove a 60% growth in revenues for the German concern and doubled the number of active users on their platform to 1.5 million. It also allowed Native Instruments to expand to seven offices worldwide, employing over 400 people.

In 2020, they named Constantin Köehncke Chief Executive Officer of Native Instruments, taking over for Daniel Haver who became Chairman of the Board. Köehncke, who was formally the Global Marketing Director in the company’s Los Angeles office, returned to Berlin in order to take the reins. Chief Innovation Officer and President Mate Galic, shifted to the role of Deputy Chairman. Robert Linke, who joined Native in 2006 and was NI’s Director of Sound Products, was then promoted to Chief Product Officer and President.

Not six months later, EMH Partners, based in Munich, as well as the founding shareholders, sold the majority of their shares in Native Instruments Holding GmbH to Francisco Partners, a global private equity firm specializing in investments in technology companies and technology-related businesses. As part of the transaction EMH Partners, members of the Native Instruments founding team and key Native Instruments’ employees retained a minority stake in the company.

At the time, Francisco announced that it was going to “invest significantly” in Native Instruments, although an exact figure was never disclosed. However, they did announce the intention of their initial strategy, stating “with the support and investment from Francisco Partners, EMH Partners and the Founding Shareholders, Native Instruments is equipped with significant resources to further consolidate the fragmented music creation software industry and create a more seamless user experience for music makers.”

It only took a couple of months before the music industry understood what Francisco meant by: consolidate the fragmented music creation software industry. In March, Native Instruments announced that “they have teamed up to form a new technology group” with iZotope, appropriately dubbed the Music Creation Group. The financial structure wasn’t detailed and the press release at the time didn’t mention if Native had purchased iZotope or if this was a merger of sorts. However, it appeared that both NI and iZotope would operate independently in their respective enterprises.

“With strong identities of their own, Native Instruments and iZotope will each continue to operate independently, serving the global creator community with the strength of their unique capabilities. There will be no structural changes to either entity, with both continuing under the same leadership, and with the same accomplished teams. Mark Ethier, co-founder and CEO of iZotope, and Constantin Köehncke, CEO of Native Instruments, will work alongside each other on the future and vision of this new alliance as co-presidents of the group.”

Soundwide

Obviously we’re not privy to Francisco’s game plan when they decided to take control, but after operating separately for only eight months, Native Instruments and iZotope stated that they were officially merging in November of 2021. With this public notification also came a major management reshuffling. Mark Cattini was brought in as CEO of the Music Creation Group. Mark Ethier stepped away from day-to-day operations as the CEO of iZotope and joined the Board of Directors. Native Instruments CEO Constantin Köhncke moved into a new role as Chief Commercial Officer and President of Music Creation group, overseeing Marketing, Sales, Brand, Customer Success, Community and Learning.

The rest of the Soundwide executive team includes Chief Technology Officer Jonathan Bailey (from iZotope), Chief Product Officer Robert Linke (from Native Instruments), Chief Legal Officer Tom Kurth (from Native Instruments) as well as Jay Schaufeld as Chief People Officer, Laura Gonzalez as Chief Strategy and Development Officer, Sherry Parvaneh as Chief Information Officer and Laurent Cordonnier as Chief Financial Officer.

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Last week, the Music Creation Group made several significant announcements. First and foremost, they were changing the name of the parent company from Music Creation Group to Soundwide and announced two acquisitions, Brainworx and Plugin Alliance, two companies founded by Dirk Ulrich and staffed by 60 employees across the Germany and the United States. Apparently, the acquisition was made quietly late last year, providing both Dirk and his wife Marina with an incredible sum for their extraordinary efforts over the past ten years developing the PluginAlliance and Brainworx platforms. Dirk Ulrich could have walked away at that point, but he reinvested a significant portion of his proceeds back into Soundwide, making him the single biggest private investor in the new “supergroup.” He’s still got a large To-Do List  of things he wants to accomplish, including launching an online music distribution platform that incorporates his mastering.studio technology, as well as a cloud-based sample player, which should be available sometime this spring.

So why, with all this bootstrapped success, did Dirk Ulrich ultimately sell his companies to Francisco Parters? It was something that Francisco Partners’ Matt Spetzler said to him during their courtship, “if you can do so much with so little, imagine what you could do with a lot!” That simple sentence sealed the deal. Ulrich will spearhead PluginAlliance / Brainworx endeavors out of his Florida office, while Managing Director Winni Schapitz will run the the BX team and office in Germany.

Soundwide also announced Sound Stacks, a new entity from Cesare Ferrari and Julian Storer, the creator of the industry-standard open-source audio application framework JUCE. For those not familiar with JUCE, it’s an open-source cross-platform C++ application framework for creating desktop and mobile applications, including VST, VST3, AU, AUv3, RTAS and AAX audio plug-ins. JUCE can be easily integrated with existing projects via CMake, or can be used as a project generation tool via the Projucer, which supports exporting projects for Xcode (macOS and iOS), Visual Studio, Android Studio, Code::Blocks and Linux Makefiles as well as containing a source code editor.

Last but not least, Soundwide has formed a new Artist Board, further building upon the relationships Native Instruments and iZotope have fostered with some of the industry’s leading musicians and producers. Inaugural board members include 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 previous relationships within the Soundwide group. Often these artist board or creative director declarations are window dressing, but Soundwide is looking to their board for guidance on how professionals utilize their products, feedback on new product ideas and working together to improve the health of the industry and surrounding communities in terms of equity and inclusion.

That said, Soundwide’s real focus is going to be on the music production enthusiast whose passion is what has been driving revenue since day one, not listening to Young Guru babble incoherently on Clubhouse. Integrating all the companies, as well as others that Soundwide may acquire in the future, into one seamless platform would provide a compelling and rewarding experience from top to bottom – think Native Access or the PluginAlliance platform on steroids. Now add Cattini’s intense focus on customer experience and Francisco’s coffers and you can begin to chart where the Sound Stacks party boat is heading.

What precisely does this affiliation mean in terms of products? Will there be collaborations? Will all products be available inside of a single entity instead of PluginAlliance, iZotope Product Portal or Native Access as mentioned above?

“We are not yet announcing any product specifics, but you can be sure we are considering integrations and more unified customer experiences,” states Melissa Misicka, iZotope’s Senior Director of Brand Marketing. “We believe the power in our coming together is to maximize the time that creators spend in the creative flow—that can include everything from offering more interconnected, assistive technology that makes the creative experience more inspiring and joyful, to more logistical enhancements that streamline time spent on purchases, authorizations, and critical updates. We’re also looking forward to exploring how we can connect our communities and provide education that makes all creators feel welcome and supported.”

The next question is how much does hardware now play into Soundwide’s future? Clearly it will be much easier to rollup new players into a cohesive software entity, as opposed to a hardware platform like Kore. Not to mention, Native hasn’t debuted a significant hardware product since Maschine+, putting the pandemic and supply-chain issues aside. However, Soundwide doesn’t think we should head down this path. “Native’s skill at tightly integrating software with hardware is still something we’re really proud of and aren’t looking to change [moving into the future],” Misicka offers.

Another thought is how many doors can Spetzler open for Soundwide in terms of leveraging the know-how from the many other investments Francisco Partners has made over the years into technology companies? For example, could Forcepoint help Soundwide beef up their online security? With many investments across a large array of companies, Soundwide could potentially have easier access to sophisticated knowledge and intelligence in non-competing sectors. Spetzler agrees, “one of the resources we provide our companies and teams is to learn from all of our other companies. Having invested in over 200 tech businesses, we have many learnings from past successes and mistakes, and we do this primarily through our Francisco Partners consulting team.”

Ultimately, what does Soundwide feel is the real tangible benefit to end users of bringing Native Instruments, iZotope, PluginAlliance, Brainworx, SoundStack and others together?

“The immediate tangible benefit from our view is that we’ve grown to an extended team of nearly 700 talented people who have no secrets from each other as we work to deliver products that empower the creative community,” Misicka responded. “Across our Soundwide teams, we have capabilities in highly integrated software and hardware, artificial intelligence and machine learning, cloud, sound design, hardware emulation, audio platform technologies, and more. No longer ‘competitors,’ we can work together to design the most comprehensive music and audio creation ecosystem the industry has ever seen.”

“The overarching aim is to help Soundwide become the go-to brand in the music and sound creation industry,” Spetzler declares. “We have what we understand to be the largest engineering team and AI/research team in the music tech industry by some measure, and we hope to use this advantage to create better innovations, with a focus on ease of use and the best value for our customers.”