Reply To: NOT A DEAL: Spitfire Has Been Acquired by Splice

[peter]

On GoncaloL said

Really hope that is the case, will wait and see

Well, it’s all about Splice’s CEO. This acquisition has the potential to be a great success for Splice AND Spitfire customers (of which I am one; and FTR, I have never consulted to Spitfire, but I have consulted to some of their competitors; I am a Spitfire customer — I own maybe 10 of their libraries).  Of course, the CEO also has an opportunity to completely screw this up. In either case, I don’t think that the YouTube commenters are being anything more than reactionaries going off half-baked.

If Splice used their financial and human resources to incorporate AI into orchestral library plugins to make them be able to more accurately perform various instrument techniques that are difficult to do using sample libraries, would you find that beneficial? What if AI could go beyond today’s DAW quantization capabilities and analyze and refine your MIDI playing for an orchestra to make it better reflect a real performance?  What if they could take those less than realistic guitar strums you played and make them sound as realistic as an actual skilled guitarist?

THE RELATED DEEP DIVE ON AI IN MUSIC PRODUCTION, SHOULD WE DO A SPIN OFF TOPIC? I WOULD BE INTERESTED IN IT. I WROTE AN ARTICLE ON AI IN THE BUSINESS WORLD THAT’S GOTTEN SOME TRACTION IN THE BUSINESS WORLD, BUT THIS USE OF AI IS MUCH MORE INTERESTING TO ME — AS IT IS MUCH MORE COMPLEX AND CROSSES INTO BUSINESS, ETHICAL, AND ARTISTIC / CREATIVE AREAS.

Don’t get me wrong, I spent years being trained as a musician and I’m the son and brother of music educators. I’ve played in numerous bands with music educators, and to me, playing with other musicians was always the most exciting part of music. Even when I’ve written or arranged music, the really exciting part is when I get to be part of a group of musicians performing music. So for me, what excites me about music is the creativity and performance part of it. I would NEVER want to outsource that to AI or an algorithm. However, the vast majority of people spending money on sample libraries, loops, one shots, plugins, and DAWs are hobbyists and very high percentage of them are not trained musicians or people with professional experience in music.

If I’m going to be super blunt. The industry makes most of its money on the unrealistic pipe dreams of people who aspire to be professionals who have little hope of ever reaching those aspirations, but the industry encourages them because it makes them a lot of money. For me, my days of performing professionally ended decades ago, and I’m just doing music for the joy of it (I’m happy if my family just sees glimpses of what I could once do and thinks something sounds cool). But the industry thrives on people’s unrealistic hopes, if we’re going to be really honest. That’s what the music streaming distribution services are based on. That is what Spitfire makes most of its money from — people’s unrealistic fantasies about being the next Hans Zimmer or even the next Billy Elish and Finneas. I am not for taking away people’s fantasies, I would just like to see the costs they pay come down. But as a strategist, I also see that the market for the kinds of tools that Spitfire makes can reach a MUCH larger audience if AI and lower prices made them more accessible to more people.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

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