Author Topic: The Future of Samples (my thoughts on Splice Sounds)  (Read 7682 times)

Unkn0wn

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The Future of Samples (my thoughts on Splice Sounds)
« on: January 12, 2016, 05:14:32 pm »
I'm sure most of you know about the newish sample service Splice Sounds, but I figured I'd shine some light on it anyway.

So Splice Sounds is a subscription service like Spotify, but for samples. The way they handle this is through credits. You pay a certain amount monthly, and get a certain amount of credits. You can then use these credits to download any sample from their library of sample packs (which is surprisingly large). It's like how the music industry switched from CD's to iTunes in a way. You used to have to buy an entire album which included all the songs, but you may not have necessarily liked every song. Then when music stores such as iTunes emerged, you could preview the songs you liked and then download just those specific songs. And this is exactly how Splice Sounds works.

So now you no longer have to buy these huge sample packs just to receive a bunch of samples you would never use. You can just go digging through packs and find the exact samples you want. They have also integrated a bunch of really thoughtful and creative features into the service. When you're selecting which samples you want to use, you have unlimited previews. There is a built in sampler to the website, so you can play the samples in context with your track, or just in context with other samples in your sampler before you download them. You can "like" samples so when searching through packs you can go to your "likes" folder and just see the samples you found interesting. You can add samples to your own folders called "Re-packs" and make your own sample pack of samples from all sorts of packs, then download that pack, or share it with fellow producers. They also include a Splice application that download the samples for you into its own Splice folder. You can even just drag the samples straight from the widget into your DAW, immediately after downloading.

Now, the price of all this? the basic plan is $8.99 a month for 100 credits. Now wait a minute, that doesn't sound like a lot at first, but think about this: how many samples do you actually use from the packs containing thousands of samples? Probably not that many, making the pack a bit of a waste of money (unless you're that into the pack, which chances are you aren't). I for one have only used around 20 credits this month of my 100. And the credits actually carry over month to month. This I think is a fantastic deal for younger producers who don't have thousands of dollars to spend on vengeance packs, and just want a couple of decent samples in their tracks. Producers are already making packs exclusively for the service, like Pegboard Nerds, Multiplier, Steve Duda, and SeamlessR among many others.

As more and more companies are advancing to the idea of subscription services (Adobe software comes to mind), it seams like these types of services are becoming the future, and Splice seems to be on to something here.

I hope this helps some of you! https://splice.com/sounds

Shew

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Re: The Future of Samples (my thoughts on Splice Sounds)
« Reply #1 on: January 12, 2016, 05:26:50 pm »
I've been using splice sounds since it opened and it has been great so far!  The Artist Re-packs really sold me
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Xan

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Re: The Future of Samples (my thoughts on Splice Sounds)
« Reply #2 on: January 12, 2016, 07:10:02 pm »
There are many other ways to get the vengeance packs if you so desire them...>_>.......<_<

Unkn0wn

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Re: The Future of Samples (my thoughts on Splice Sounds)
« Reply #3 on: January 12, 2016, 07:52:27 pm »
Splice is probably the best way to get samples LEGALLY, but I don't want to get into a torrent/pirating discussion. Not my original point.

Pzychosis

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Re: The Future of Samples (my thoughts on Splice Sounds)
« Reply #4 on: January 12, 2016, 09:38:50 pm »
I personally love the idea a lot, get what you want and that's it, why waste for the others. I see one major problem with the system. Before, with a normal sample pack, you could have a preview of a limited amount of samples, which obviously can be frustrating to an extent not knowing what you're getting, which is why Splice Sounds are awesome, but the problem with being able to see ALL the samples directly is somebody can just straight up record the sample by playing online and recording it. Granted, this would have a small change in quality, so a semi-professional or professional couldn't stand to do it, but it could be easily done by the average amateur. And I know people pirate current sample packs, but this makes it even easier, because before at least one person had to buy the product to give it to others. Now literally one could pirate rather than relying on another. That's the main flaw I see in the system.

Unkn0wn

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Re: The Future of Samples (my thoughts on Splice Sounds)
« Reply #5 on: January 12, 2016, 09:46:32 pm »
2 things. When you play a sample in the browser, it's actually streaming it, making a hypothetical recorded version have much worse quality than you might think. Also, you have to pay for the service to even be able to stream all the sounds in the first place. I'd rather have the system as is than to limit previews.