Founded in Sep. 2019, Audioguy operates Korea's first Dolby Atmos music studio, "Sound360." Building on more than 20 years of experience as a recording engineer, Chief Executive Choi Jeong-hoon launched the company and, in 2021, opened the spatial audio–specialized studio "Sound360," marking a leap forward.
Strategy and planning director Lee Dong-ju, who joined last year, said, "We are a Start - Up that has preserved the most challenging recording and audio technologies while also combining new distribution and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to expand the market."
Spatial audio is not merely a technology that makes sound louder or softer. Even with only two speakers, it can reproduce the sense of space in which instruments are placed as in a real concert hall, allowing listeners to experience music vividly.
Lee said, "If stereo is a flat sound, spatial audio lets you feel the position of instruments as they are along the XYZ axes," adding, "Dolby Atmos is representative, and we are applying it in earnest to the music industry, including K-pop."
Audioguy, which had operated a production studio, also began focusing on spatial audio around the time of COVID-19. It came out of exploring ways to make music feel immersive when it was difficult to go outside. In 2021, as Apple Music supported "Spatial Audio," spatial audio that adjusts sound direction in real time according to the listener's head position and delivers three-dimensional immersion gained recognition.
Lee said, "As the spatial audio market opened, Audioguy rebuilt its studio as 'Sound360' and undertook projects with various super IPs." Lee added, "We handled work for top artists at home and abroad, including BTS's Busan concert, BLACKPINK, aespa, and Psy, accumulating more than 1,000 spatial audio productions," and "most recently, we were in charge of every track for the virtual idol group 'PLAVE,' which entered the Global 200 chart."
On the strength of these results, Audioguy also secured 700 million won in seed funding and posted 960 million won in revenue last year. This year, it is targeting 1.6 billion won in revenue and already achieved more than half in the first half. In particular, because second-half revenue is typically larger, achieving this year's target is likely.
Audioguy is expanding beyond content production into distribution. While conventional studios rely on per-track production fees, Audioguy uses AI technology to establish mass-production systems and handles distribution directly. Audioguy's vision is to distribute all content that applies spatial audio.
Lee noted, "About 290,000 tracks are produced worldwide each day, and spatial audio accounts for only 0.5% of them," adding, "Based on data accumulated by engineers, we used our in-house AI assistant to shorten production time from several days to several hours."
Spatial audio distribution is not limited to music alone. It is expanding into various areas, including audiobooks, virtual idol performances, and Extended Reality (XR) content.
Lee emphasized, "We will become a company that increases the value of content through technology," adding, "Helping artists receive more revenue and recognition for artistic value is why Audioguy exists."