Most audio wants to keep you awake. Ours helps you fall asleep.
Two companies, one idea
In 2016, two small companies started chasing that idea separately. Neither began as a business plan.
Kitefaster, LLC began with a founder, a baby who kept waking through the night, and an app built at home to soothe them both back to sleep. That app became Deep Sleep Sounds. Indian Summer Media, LLC began with a founder who knew insomnia from the inside, and built Slumber as the app they wished existed at 3 a.m.
In 2019 they merged, and Slumber Studios was born: one studio doing one thing, getting people to sleep.
The timeline
- February 2016 — Kitefaster launches the Deep Sleep Sounds app.
- July 2016 — Kitefaster follows with Sleep Fan, an early fan-noise app.
- December 2016 — Indian Summer Media launches the Slumber app.
- April 2019 — the two companies merge to form Slumber Group, LLC DBA Slumber Studios, the company behind everything you see here.
- November 2019 — Get Sleepy launches, and becomes one of the world’s most popular sleep podcasts.
- February 2020 — Bedtime Fan joins the family, acquired from EllisApps (who first launched it back in 2014).
- April 2020 — the Deep Sleep Sounds podcast launches.
- July 2021 — The Sleepy Bookshelf opens, with Elizabeth Grace reading the classics.
- August 2022 — Send Me To Sleep joins the network, acquired from Stride Digital (its first episode aired in May 2020).
- April 2023 — Slumber Studios becomes an audiobook publisher, bringing its slow, soft readings of the classics to the major audiobook stores.
- June 2023 — Slumber Studios becomes a music label, releasing original sleep music by our artists on Spotify, Apple Music, and every major streaming platform.
- September 2023 — Snuggle launches, bringing bedtime stories to the whole family.
- November 2024 — Sleepy History launches, and quickly finds a devoted audience.
- Coming in 2026 — a brand-new show is in production: a spinoff of The Sleepy Bookshelf. Follow The Sleepy Bookshelf to hear it first.
What we make now
Today that job spans three apps with more than 35 million downloads, six podcasts — including Get Sleepy, one of the world’s most popular sleep shows — a library of 150+ audiobooks read slowly and softly, and original sleep music from artists we love working with.
One thing hasn’t changed since 2016: everything we make is made by people. Every episode is narrated by a real person, written and edited by human writers, and mixed by a human audio engineer — a promise we spell out in detail on how we make our shows.
Who we are
We’re a core team of about twenty — writers, editors, podcast hosts, a musician, an audio engineer, producers, and the engineers behind our apps — spread across the US, UK, Canada, Germany and more, headquartered in Durham, North Carolina. Around that core is a rotating pool of 20–30 freelance writers and narrators. Our narrators — the voices millions of people fall asleep to — are based in and around London. We take sleep seriously and ourselves less so.
Many of us came to this work as insomniacs and light sleepers who spent years needing exactly what we now make. It’s part of why people join, and it shows in the care that goes into every episode.
If you’d like to work with us, our partnerships page is the door for brands and platforms, and careers is where our roles live. And if you just want to say hello, we’d love that too.
