Spitfire Audio acquired by SPLICE

[Linos]

Here are the news:

https://vi-control.net/community/thread ... st-5715841

I am not sure what that means for the future of the company. Apparently, Paul Thomson has stepped down. At least he is not a director anymore. There is no official announcement as of yet.

[Tanuj Tiku]

Huh! Very surprising news but perhaps the owners were in distress and/or wanted to cash out.

It must be a troubling time to figure out the next 5 years at any sample library company in the wake of AI.

AFAIK, splice has zero experience in this area which is quite specific but it provides them with a large sound set to use in their massive portal. Maybe they are investing in AI and need good quality orchestral VST pipeline. The recordings and scripting are where the meat probably is.

[Guy Rowland]

Yes, totally out of left field. I did find it odd that the Ronroco library seemed to have no real presence in VI-C. Mike says that they pulled all their advertising.

I do wonder if there is something quite big happening here - an end of an era, and I don't just mean Spitfire Audio. I don't think the market can support that many big orchestral sample library developers. How many more spaces can orchestras be recorded in? CineSamples pivoted to Musio and are finding it tough.

I think technology will push people into different areas.

[Geoff Grace]

I agree. The landscape is changing, AI is the future, and sample libraries are an increasingly old technology.

Nonetheless, Spitfire Audio was an important part of our journey through the sample library world; and the founders are now both gone from the company. (It turned out I was wrong.) I don't know how bright the future may be. Perhaps this will open the door to something special; but for a little while at least, I'm going to be sad and nostalgic about the door that closed today.

Best,

Geoff

[Tanuj Tiku]

Yes, totally out of left field. I did find it odd that the Ronroco library seemed to have no real presence in VI-C. Mike says that they pulled all their advertising.

I do wonder if there is something quite big happening here - an end of an era, and I don't just mean Spitfire Audio. I don't think the market can support that many big orchestral sample library developers. How many more spaces can orchestras be recorded in? CineSamples pivoted to Musio and are finding it tough.

I think technology will push people into different areas.

Yes, I think your intuition is right because we are seeing change in all aspects of the entertainment industry and so the effects will be downstream. If film and TV is down globally then it will reflect in the sales for such companies presumably. I suspect that Spitfire was as big because there were sales made to many hobbyists and aspiring musicians who are just beaten down right now. This will only add to it all.

Here in India, film is down massively with budget cuts with contraction of the industry. What is more, the FMCG staples around the world are also facing consumer spending crunch which means even advertising is affected badly.

This is all before we even talk about AI which is surely a death knell for many aspects of music technology. Izotope and NI come to mind in terms of consolidation. I am seeing troublesome hyper sales from companies like Sonnox.

What is more, there is less money involved in music making in general and we have seen the collapse of big studios and cheaper home studios are on the rise with very competitively priced gear.

The money is now only in the very top end in many areas and there could be companies that do well in this segment but the middle class in music and sound is under massive threat right now.

Now, whether any of this is applicable to Spitfire's balance sheet today is anybody's guess. It may be they have taken preemptive action.

[GR Baumann]

Kakul Sirvastava appointed as director. Some might find this interesting (Warning, a lot of hyped up corporate bullshit talk as well. It is a nice reminder to me why I left that fucked up corporate fake world once and for all. )

Personal opinion: It happened to photography, it will happen to music as well. Is this a positive development? Not at all, not in my world, but your mileage may vary.

[GR Baumann]

Make of it what you will.

[Geoff Grace]

Wait, Paul feels excited? Who knew?

Best,

Geoff

[GR Baumann]

Hehehehe

[Geoff Grace]

At least there will be more continuity going forward than it first appeared. I don't know whether that will result in me buying upcoming Spitfire products or not. We'll see what they release in the future.

Best,

Geoff

[Guy Rowland]

While that video is mostly vaguely nice sounding waffle, there's quite a few tangible hand-holds in there. Paul is staying; there will new products; permanent pricing will remain and he even namedropped Abbey Road.

Splice is getting huge, even though I never hear anyone talk about it. I don't know how integrated everyone is, but on their site already is NI, iZotope, Arturia, Steinberg, IK Multimedia, Korg, XLN, Xfer, Softube, Output, D16 and scores of smaller companies. I guess they are just resellers for some of these?

[Guy Rowland]

A bit of stuff at Splice:
https://splice.com/blog/splice-acquires-spitfire-audio/

And an FAQ at Spitfire
https://spitfireaudio.zendesk.com/hc/en ... fire-Audio

[Jaap]

I am so done with sentences like “We have such a shared passion for the creators we serve; our values match,”.
I saw Splice is backed by Goldman Sachs and with that in the back of the pocket you know that the last thing they care about is sharing passing for the creators they serve...

I have not seen the interview as it just feels like a waste of spare time, but I guess Splice will make a bold move into the world of AI, otherwise Goldman Sachs would not have been involved I guess.

[Guy Rowland]

Totally share the cynicism Jaap.

I did wade through the uncomfortable interview, and they do address AI head-on. They both claimed to strongly agree that "bad AI" is anything that removes from the creative process, ie push a button and a 3 minute cue pops out. They argue that the kind of AI that they are interested in is the opposite of this.

This is a very broad discussion (maybe for another thread?) but setting aside the specifics with Spitfire's future I do think the thrust of this idea has merit. We're seeing amazing tools in music, audio and video production which were simply impossible before. They can make things better and remove tedious rote jobs (my friend in vis fx always cites rotoscoping as a job he's delighted to see eradicated). Wearing my dubbing mixer's hat (I do have a literal hat I wear for this... is this strange behaviour?) I'd hate to go back and not have those dialogue isolate tools.

I can imagine wonderful tools for composers where AI can turn our specific intent into more realistic performances from our virtual instruments. We always strive for this, it's always frustrating, who wouldn't want that better?

As I say, how any of this equates to Splice's takeover from Spitfire is anyone's guess. But although I remain cynical, not all the verbiage coming out of the announcement is entirely without merit I think.

[Geoff Grace]

It didn’t take the new corporate overlords long to start moving away from Paul as the face of the company:

Join Callum (AKA “Rando”) for an exciting product walkthrough

(Okay, I added the AKA “Rando” part.)

The product, by the way, is Abbey Road Orchestra: Oboes Core and Professional, which I believe was conceived by both Paul and Christian.

If memory serves, there have been three product walkthroughs since the Splice takeover. Paul was only involved in one of them, for Shakespeare’s Church Organ. The Ronroco by Gustavo Santaolalla walkthrough was with Mike Georgiades.

Edit: They've now changed to video title to "Spitfire Audio: Abbey Road Orchestra Oboes – Full Walkthrough & Performance Tips."

Edit 2: I dug a little and discovered that Callum isn't actually just a rando; he's Spifire's QA Engineer, Callum McNeill.

Best,

Geoff

[Lawrence]

Hopefully Paul is still very excited.

[tack]

Edit 2: I dug a little and discovered that Callum isn't actually just a rando; he's Spifire's QA Engineer, Callum McNeill.

Yes, I was going to say I've seen him in videos well before the Splice announcement. No grand conspiracy here I'm afraid.

[Geoff Grace]

Edit 2: I dug a little and discovered that Callum isn't actually just a rando; he's Spifire's QA Engineer, Callum McNeill.

Yes, I was going to say I've seen him in videos well before the Splice announcement. No grand conspiracy here I'm afraid.

No, "conspiracy" isn't a word I would have chosen; but it was a little jarring not to see Paul as the face of an Abbey Road Orchestra product launch. Has that ever happened before?

I hope my post was an overreaction. Time will tell.

Best,

Geoff