OUR GUIDING PRINCIPLE

Artist Obsession

We believe everyone who works on music production is an artist: performers, producers, mixing and mastering engineers, songwriters, studio musicians... everyone. Early in the Playhead journey, we wrote The Artist Obsession Manifesto, summarized here:

Above all else, we design and build for the artist’s inner experience while making music. Not just for speed, results, workflow, or outcome. At every turn, we ask ourselves:

“What would keep the artist in flow, in control, in alignment with their taste, in a role of true agency over how to manifest their creative vision, at this moment and all such moments in the future?”

Our job is to remove friction between imagination and sound, while preserving alignment across artistic agency, authorship, control, and flow. We call this alignment Creative Congruence, and it’s our core design principle.

We relentlessly focus on the artist’s creative, lived experience.

Artist Obsession is our north star.

THE PEOPLE BUILDING PLAYHEAD

James Jones

Audio Engineer

James loves music production, and has worked on everything from punk rock, country, and lo-fi indie records to TV, commercial, and feature film projects. He loves the challenge of weaving sounds together to form a cohesive mix. He also loves to play: DJing, drumming, and producing his own dance tracks.

Lauren Serota

Head of Design

Designer, operator, dusty DJ, shower vocalist. Deeply experienced in building leading-edge teams and products that are beautiful and human. She cut her teeth in the electronic music industry and has spent her career since bringing new things to market, many with startups and in frontier markets.

Grayson Schoenfeld

Product Designer

Professional mixing engineer, product designer and musician from Austin. Background in music production (including producing much of Shelby's solo work) and audio interface design. First team member to join the Playhead founders. Encyclopedic knowledge of music.

Shelby Stephens

Co-Founder & CEO

Musician, songwriter, and startup founder from Austin. Currently releasing a collection of solo work. After years of producing his own music and living the struggle between artistic vision and technical execution, he decided to build the tool he needed but couldn’t find, which became Playhead.

Jason Seats

Co-founder & CTO

Experienced founder, entrepreneur, investor, and musician. Deep background in systems, infrastructure, and audio signal processing. Co-founded Playhead with Shelby after years of friendship, playing in a band together, and a shared conviction that it’s time to reinvent the human interfaces for music production.

Scott Gress

Software Engineer

Lifelong pursuer of musical truth and technological greatness. Or technological truth and musical adequacy? Engineer, startup founder and general tinkerer, lover of big thoughts and small cats, behind the scenes and beside himself that decades of computering have led him to Playhead. He also welds.

Colin Gimenez

Technical Engineer

Creative technologist. Experience in film, animation, visual effects, VR gaming, and emerging tech. Combines technical problem-solving with a deep understanding of creative workflows to build entirely new things that empower creative people.

Nathan Innis

HEAD OF COMMUNITY

Community builder, go-to-market engineer, and jazz pianist. Creative at heart with an unused journalism degree. Across tech, fintech and creative operations, experience managing teams of marketers, working as a product manager, and building online communities for YouTubers.

Stephen Huerta

Head of Sales

Drummer, entrepreneur, and startup builder based in Austin. A lifelong Bonzo fanatic, Stephen brings a deep background in startup sales and early-stage growth. After 25 years away from drums, music pulled him into a new community and now, Playhead.

Brian Schopfel

HEAD OF PARTNERSHIPS

Brian is a lifelong musician who has brought URL and IRL programs to life for Nike, GoDaddy, Harley-Davidson, Bumble, 6lack, and Channing Tatum's Magic Mike Live. His brand Floating has hosted 600+ sound experiences around the world.

Alex Prieto

Partnerships

Alex is a platinum-selling recording engineer and mixer. His credits span Bad Omens, Papa Roach, Pierce the Veil, Motionless in White, to Basement, julie, and Bloc Party, alongside work on Bob’s Burgers, The Great North, and Central Park. He's good at loud noises.