THE RISE OF SPLICE & WHY IT WILL OUTLAST THE PANDEMIC

Gaining traction from the forced growth of independent and DIY music scenes due to the pandemic, music creation software ‘Splice’ is now valued at half a billion dollars. With aspiring musicians and producers stuck at home due to the pandemic, accessible software to record music at home became a necessary resource.

Enter Splice-- the all-encompassing cloud platform for music collaboration, creation, and sharing. The software features a beatmaker, production tools, and hundreds of thousands of royalty-free samples that can be used in the creation of songs. Founded in 2013 by GroupMe co-founder Steve Martocci, the software came to fruition intending to provide accessible software to an ever expanding group of aspiring musicians who do not have the support of a label behind them. It makes samples accessible to Splice users by charging a monthly fee to use the application, rather than paying separate royalties every time you want to use a beat.

The recent public attention that Splice garnered is reflective of the sheer amount of music that has been created in the era of streaming. In 2019, Spotify added an average of 40,000 new tracks a day to their platforms. This mass production directly correlates to how easy it has become to create music at home. Independent artists who lack the means to go to the studio now benefit from the availability of the tools and recording functions that can be installed on their laptops and thus, an influx of new tracks emerge.

This ability to record at home, however, does not just exist solely in the realms of DIY and independent music; it has started to make its way into mainstream normality. Charli XCX and Billie Eilish are among big-name artists that have taken full advantage of this software to record at home.

Could recording at home become the future of music production, even past the pandemic? Experts are saying absolutely. In an interview with Rolling Stone Billie Eilish’s brother and collaborator, Finneas stated that “Recording at home is how everyone except for the biggest stars is doing it now.”