When Splice launched in 2014, it was primarily concerned with cloud-based collaboration and backup. The centerpiece was its Studio service, which was compatible with Ableton Live, Logic Pro X, FL Studio, Garageband and Studio One.
Times are changing, however; in 2015, the company unveiled Splice Sounds, a subscription-based sampling service, followed by the Rent-To-Own program for music software in 2016 and the AI-driven Similar Sounds feature three years later.
All of this means that the Studio element of Splice is no longer the company’s top priority. In fact, it has now been confirmed that it is being shut down.
Writing on the Splice Blog (opens in a new tab)the company’s CEO, Kakul Srivastava, says, “While Studio’s potential to help music creators collaborate was core to our founding ideology, this feature hasn’t been a priority for us since 2017. Simply put, we haven’t been able to deliver the quality of experience that we can be proud of. In fact, keeping it functional has actually prevented us from delivering more value, faster. We also know that our users have many great alternatives for file sharing.”
From now on, you can no longer add stems, bounces and collaborators, and you can no longer add new Studio projects on the Splice website. The Community tab, meanwhile, redirects to the Splice Discord community.
The next big date is April 7, when Splice will disable the ability to add new Studio projects in its desktop app. Then, on May 31, the Studio element on the website and the Projects tab in the desktop app will be removed, so sessions and reviews will no longer be automatically synced and Studio projects will no longer be available .
Despite this pivot, Splice says he remains committed to finding new, more powerful ways for musicians to collaborate and will share more details about that in the future.