⚡40% Off Any Library at Spitfire with Code – TODAY ONLY!!!

[peter]

 To celebrate May the 4th, we’re offering 40% off a library of your choice until the end of the day. If there’s a library you’ve had your eye on, now’s your chance.

May the Force be with you.

Use the code below at checkout:
MAY40

Shop Now
*Discount ends 4th May 2025 23:59 BST. Discount code can only be used once per customer. Discount code limited to one product. Excludes our newest releases (Abbey Road Orchestra Percussion Core, BBC Radiophonic Workshop, The Albions Orchestral Selects, Spitfire Swarms, Ronroco by Gustavo Santaolalla, Atmospheric Textures), hard drives and The Professional Composer’s Guide. Does not stack with other offers.

https://www.spitfireaudio.com/instruments

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

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[peter]

I don’t know if I have the time to write a full article, but I realize there’s a ton of speculation about Spitfire. Right off the bat, I want to make clear that I’ve never consulted to Spitfire or Splice and I don’t know anyone from either company personally or casually and I don’t have an affiliate relationship with Spitfire or Splice. I’m a regular paying customer of Spitfire and have never been a customer of Splice, as I am not a big user of loops or one-shot samples; I primarily use sample libraries along with MIDI controllers. I’m looking at this as business and marketing strategist who has provided consulting to this industry for more than two decades, because I see a lot of folks speculating, and candidly, while I get their biases and concerns, they’re getting a whole lot wrong — to the point of being blind to some undeniable facts — so I want to point out some very significant facts and share some basic insights about business strategy.

While I can’t predict the future, I do know that the knee-jerk reaction that Spitfire is going to stop selling Spitfire sample libraries and do everything as a subscription is a leap that defies logic. Why? While most of Splice’s revenue comes from their subscription service, they also sell perpetual license plugins for both straight out purchase and using the rent-to-own model, which results in the customer owning a perpetual license when they have fully paid for their product. The rent-to-own model is increasingly popular with retailers, and it’s different than the subscription model. It aims at lower-income consumers and gives them away to use the product before they’ve fully paid for it.

Here are some potential strategies that Splice is considering (and I’m sure that they’re planning on more than one):

(1) Expanding their reach with the cinematic/games music audience and looking to bring them into the fold of their services.

(2) Expanding the breadth of their product offerings with orchestral and other libraries produced by Spitfire.

(3) Attempting to lead the composer market with offerings for composers and more mainstreamed versions for their typical Splice customer audience/target market.

(4) Use their resources to bring AI to orchestral sample libraries that makes them more accessible to a wider audience. This is what Splice’s CEO has stated the company plans on doing, and it makes sense. How they execute that go about that strategy is the thing we don’t know. But I would think the idea that they’re going to abandon the composer market is an assumption without a foundation. It lacks any reasonable supporting logic. In this situation, I could not imagine that the acquiring company would make a decision to give up Spitfire’s customer base. No, that’s certainly part of why Splice acquired Spitfire. That customer base likely yields higher profit margins than many of Splice’s products and the average purchase is certainly considerably higher than that of Splice. That leads to the likelihood that Splice will NOT abandon Spitfire’s sample library lines. They’ll likely make changes, but abandon the customer base and high margins? I don’t see that.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music. 

3

[Xandre]

Do you think they might go the East West way, and offer something like Composer Cloud?

[peter]

On Xandre said

Do you think they might go the East West way, and offer something like Composer Cloud?

EDIT: This is my second take on this reply. The first one resulted in some confusion, which I’ll do my best to avoid this time.

Yes, I definitely could see Splice doing something like Composer Cloud with a subscription offering aimed at the composer market. I think in the video with the CEO of Splice and Paul from Spitfire is that Labs+ will soon be available to Splice customers, that would seem a pretty easy fit with their current customers. But a Composer Cloud like offering to the composer market could expand their customer base, and the competitive environment seems clear that prices are coming down and subscriptions are becoming more popular to bring new customers into the fold for cinematic / orchestral libraries. But again, because there’s such a high price point and high margin for their orchestral / cinematic libraries, I think it’s likely that they will maintain perpetual licenses.

It is disappointing to see — largely at YouTube and Reddit — a large amount of hate posts directed at Splcie’s CEO and an unfounded assertion that Splice is going to go subscription-only with Spitfire’s libraries, as if it’s a fact (some comments go into worse areas that that about the CEO that turn things into culture wars). Add to that, there’s a lot of disparagement by the posters against Splice customers and different genres. Clearly, most of the hate posters aren’t aware that Splice sells perpetual license plugins at their store. So, I would recommend to my fellow Spitfire customers that Splice presently sells perpetual licenses as well as their subscription service. Splice customers and Spitfire customers are really two different, very distinct target markets. I seriously doubt that Splice’s CEO would give up on the Spitfire customers, which certainly spend a lot more money per purchase, per year than Splice customers. They’re two very distinct customer bases, but I think Splice can get a lot of intellectual property from Spitfire and also grow the orchestral/cinematic customer market.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music. 

[Kirean]

As long as they don’t EFF their customers who already bought and paid for their items and force weird upgrade plans, shenanigans or make them pay for the items again, I’m cool with the situation.

1

[peter]

On Kirean said

As long as they don’t EFF their customers who already bought and paid for their items and force weird upgrade plans, shenanigans or make them pay for the items again, I’m cool with the situation.

I totally agree. I bought Abbey Road Iconic String 2 for Black Friday, and I love it — except for Spitfire’s player, which I really don’t like. But yeah, if they pulled something like some people are afraid they’ll pull, I would be pretty unhappy. And considering that you can’t resell Spitfire libraries, it’s a total dead end. Let’s hope they’re smarter than that.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music. 

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