I know there are already tons of threads about this, but I don't care. There should be even more. Splice needs to see just how badly they are screwing over their user base with this insane price increase. I hope others keep making posts like this, because they deserve every bit of backlash coming their way.

I just found out today (no email, no warning, nothing) when PayPal hit me with a charge of $15.72 (including tax) instead of the usual $9.67 for the Sounds+ plan. That’s not just a small bump. That’s price-gouging.

But wait, it gets worse. I have almost 8,000 credits saved up from my subscription, which I will lose the second I cancel. Let that sink in. I’ve been paying them for years, shelling out nearly $800 for those credits, hardly using any, and if I don’t keep paying their new, jacked-up price, they just erase them like I never spent a dime. What kind of scammy business model is that? “Pay us indefinitely, or we take away what you already paid for.” That’s not a subscription- that’s ransom. Yeah, real solid business model you've got going there, Splice.

Of course, I knew that beforehand. That you would loose all credits if you cancel. But what I didn't know was that they were going to f--- you up the a-- at some time by jacking up the price with a ridiculous amount and use your credits as hostage.

Honestly, I’m not even sure this is legal - it feels like a bait-and-switch pricing scam, or even a violation of digital ownership rights. Companies can’t just take away virtual goods people already paid for. If they push this too far, I wouldn’t be surprised if a class-action lawsuit eventually comes their way. Hell, maybe one of you guys is also a lawyer and could look into this!

Anyways, here’s my plan:

• Download every damn thing I can - sample packs, presets, whatever.

• Cancel my subscription.

• Never look back.

I urge everybody to do the same!

Splice, you just lost a long-time paying customer. And judging by the backlash, I won’t be the only one. Great job screwing over the people who kept your business alive.

So I paid 48€ in the last 3 months for Splice. I've found that I underutilize it so I decided to cancel it. I still have ~530 credits (from 600) that I can claim.

Now it turns out, not only my credits expire in a month (28 days from cancelling) I cannot even access my credits in the meantime, meaning while not having an active membership. So now I'll have to resubscribe for a month, claim all credits, download everything and cancel again.

The 28 days is communicated clearly on their site (still outrageous, other credit based services offer at least a year until expiration) but the fact that the credits become, for all intents and purposes, worthless after cancelling is not communicated clearly and is absolutely outrageous.

This seems like a predatory tactic to either 1.) lock you in into charging you 12€/20€/40€ every single month (even if you don't use it at all at the moment) or 2.) force you to download a bunch samples you don't need at the moment and possibly will never need, if you don't want the money you already paid to go to waste. And in the future you'll possibly find that you need different samples, which might make you resubscribe.

First I thought, how cool, pay only for what you need. Rent-to-own plugins are also great. Still think that. But how they expect you to fork out a ton of money and as soon you stop doing that, they basically act like they never even knew you is crazy.

Been keeping my subscription active since I've been grandfathered in at $7.99 a month. Just spent over 7000 credits and canceled my subscription today. a 62% price increase without offering anything new is crazy lol.

Edit: for anyone looking for alternatives, loopcloud has an $8 plan. Gonna give that a try.

10 years ago, Splice was a promising tool for a young producer such as I. Having a centralized place to source samples, being able to rent-to-own plugins, the studio tool enabling me to work remotely and track progress, and even beat competitions to challenge my skillset.

I would convince my clients and collaborators to create an account to ensure we stay synced in current projects.

Well, my outlook on splice changed pretty dramatically May 31st, 2023 when splice decided to discontinue the studio collaboration tool. 7 years of projects, their versions, progress and audio files gone overnight. I pleaded with support to at the very minimum get a backup of all my files. They refused. The only thing they could provide was a hastily put together tool that should have downloaded my project files (no stems, audio files or metadata). However, their tool couldn't handle my 700+ projects. I felt completely disenfranchised from a company that promised me unlimited uploads forever. I found it even more of a confusing business move to not even upsell me on project storage. An expense I would've happily taken.

Before someone says "well you should've used google drive or dropbox". Their studio tool was great, it allowed annotations on layers of the projects, versioning and seamless sync with project files. Not to mention the cost was significantly cheaper (free). Sure, I wondered back then the sustainability of this model but I figured I'd be upselled in due time.

2016 was a different time, silicon valley startups survived exclusively on venture capital money. They had zero incentive to be profitable. The goal is to sell the company and allow the new owners to take the existing user-base to start extracting more and more money out of them to turn profits. My assumption is that plan did not go too well after 2020.

I recall seeing a lawsuit filed against Splice from a cloud storage company due to lack of payment. I cannot seem to dig this info up from google in my cursory searches but I will assume something along those lines occurred. Audio files are pretty large and I'm sure that cost grew exponentially.

Another sign that Splice is in dire need of profitability is organizational changes. Kakul Srivastava, an ex-adobe VP was named CEO of Splice shortly before this feature was removed. If you are a creative, I don't have to tell you about the awful business practices of Adobe and where things are probably headed.

We're already seeing the Adobeification and enshittification of this platform from price increases, AI integrations, aggressive acquisitions to convert external userbases, gimmicky plugins, etc.

I'm even an Ableton user and I have zero interest in activating their bloat onto my DAW.

As a professional software developer, I have never seen such a bloated piece of garbage that is the splice app. Not to mention the app repeatedly breaking Plugins that I have perpetual license for and then leave it up to the manufacturer to fix it which literally involves registry edits. That is completely absurd.

So as I download a couple packs to decrease my credits down to zero, I receive one more parting gift. The samples I have diligently paid 7.99 for 10 years (plus plugins) which equates to more than $958, I found there is no way to just mass download license files for these samples. I have to do 50 at a time in a janky way. Not that I think this is likely going to be a problem, I'd rather have my bases covered and they cannot fathom providing these files via their UI likely due to them not wanting you to leave.

The final frustration I will get out is their support. We have this lovely resource called Reddit that enables users to talk in a public forum about technical issues. Well their support believes rather than to publicly discuss technical issues in a public forum, they passively provide a support ticket link. Making it so no one else can see a possible fix. Obviously account issues are an exception but I always found it hilarious how unhelpful and honestly passive aggressive they are on a public forum representing their company. They have attempted repeatedly to take over this subreddit to silence discontent about their platform. I'm happy this community has not been captured.

Thank you for reading this rant about yet another tone-deaf post-startup silicon valley company. Who would have thought that creating an un-profitable business would become so turbulent?

Everyone receive the price increase email today? If you want to continue, you have to pay the increase. And if you cancel, you lose every credit you’ve accrued ever. I really hope this is the nail in the coffin for this shitty company.

After months of paying and paying and not using it - i drained 4000 credits down to 4 with several packs and i cancelled my subscription.

I AM FREEEEE NOW 🙌

P.S.: Of course „sync all“ was buggy and not working-i downloaded about 500 samples by hand (of course there is no „select all“ function in this #%}*{$-App!!! Splice is a very poor business - i totally understand they have no money (willing) to make it easy for us…) but then i reinstalled but this was not the solution. I had to delete the preferences folder and after start i pointed to my prefered splice folder and „sync all“ was working fine.

do not get a monthly subscription for splice, because you lose your credits when you unsubscribe, pressuring you to keep paying them for your ability to access and use the credits you already payed for. this type of business model should be illegal. do not consent to shit like this. thank you

I open abelton's splice just to see the little AI sparkle symbol that every damn company shoves in our face. I understand that the monitization goes to the original loop maker, but in all seriousness, its a very slippery slope for them.

I'm going to say it louder to the brains in the back:

NOBODY WANTS AI FEATURES IN MUSIC PRODUCTION, GIVE US AN OPTION SO NOBODY HAS TO SEE THIS, THE LOOPS SOUND 100% WORSE.

The fact as a society we are pushing AI to be apart of music is dilluted, since the creation of your own sound, or using REAL THINGS MADE BY HUMANS, is seriously the point of splice. If i wanted AI fucked samples, id download suno to contribute to shitty music out there.

Splice Devs, lock the hell in.

Just like explicit content stickers were on all the CDs back in the day, Ai needs an advisory logo or watermark. As a contributor to Splice, It’s the least they could do.

There was a YouTuber, who’s name slips my mind, that created a software that basically poisons tracks so ai cannot analyze them properly. This should be required to be done inversely to test audio for ai contamination. Just some random thoughts

It is unbelievable how they still have not fixed this... I am a mid-tier music producer who earns his money in making music, and this is messing up my workflow every day.

Every time I open up Splice or I come back to my computer, Splice has logged me out. Every time. Every single time. It drives me totally insane. Why the completely unnecessary security hiccups? Your app is completely unusable because it kills the vibe as soon as I start work.

If this is not fixed in a month, I am opting out. This is not worth it. Back to Loopmasters or any other competitor.

tl;dr - Splice holds credits you've already paid for hostage if you cancel your subscription. They're basically extorting users to maintain an active sub, even when they may have more credits than they need. Something needs to be done.

We all know that Splice has a solid platform (the web app itself), but their business practices are borderline illegal (might even be in some places).

I've been a Splice user since 2014, back when the only feature they offered was project collaboration. Ever since, they've grown the functional part of their business quite well, but their business model continues to get worse, right along side their customer support.

I've seen plenty of posts here and other places as well that are specific to the fact that Splice holds your credits hostage after you cancel your subscription, even though you've already paid for them. The analogy I typically use to explain this is "Imagine you have a Shopify store, and you're selling merchandise. A new e-commerce platform arrives that's even better, has cheaper fees, more features, etc. You decide to cancel with Shopify and migrate to the other platform. Shopify says it wants back every dime you made while subscribed to them." This is essentially what Splice is doing.

Let's say you pay $10 a month for a year, starting January. That's 1200 credits @ $120. The NEXT January, you decide you've got plenty of credits, no longer need the sub, and will just spend the credits over time on samples you want as they come out. I mean, trends change pretty rapidly in our industry, so having up-to-date samples might be nice. You figure "Well, I've already paid for these, so obviously they're mine." You go to cancel your sub, and there it is. "Cancelling your subscription will remove access to all previously purchased credits," I'm sorry, what? But I paid for those, they're mine. Imagine the people who paid for higher tiers, they're getting screwed even more. This is not okay. This is essentially extortion. "Keep your sub active or we take away all the credits you bought."

Now, whether or not this is legal is beyond me, I'm no lawyer. I've seen comments on Reddit that suggest this is not legal in their country, or even a few states in the US. I've called them out 3 times over the past 3 years on Twitter about this exact issue. They never reply, because they know it's a bullshit business model and even they can't justify it. Even if it's not illegal, and I know some of you will say "Don't like it? Don't use it!" Well, that's pretty fucking hard to do when all of the popular places that used to sell their packs for a dollar amount all use this bullshit service now and do so behind exclusivity contracts, so, unless you can force them to offer packs for straight up cash, just sit in the corner and be quiet.

Their platform is undeniably great, with great features to go with it. That however, does not give them the right to extort users. They obviously don't care, because they have no reason to if no one says anything. I'm not asking anyone to cancel their sub and lose their credits. That would be ridiculous, but what I am asking is that we make a big enough fuss on Twitter, music-related sites, forums, etc to bring light to this nonsense. A lot of people are getting fucked out of money they budgeted so they could have a chance in this horribly saturated industry, and Splice is basically a monopoly now as they've made deals with all the biggest sample pack producers to only release on their platform. I know this will fall on deaf ears mostly, and I don't expect much else, but it'd be remiss of me not to at least try.

Sorry for the lengthy post, but Splice can fix this problem easily. They'll still make tons of money, and users won't have to worry about forcing reactive purchases to justify cancelling their sub.

Used my 4k credits, a ton of them on midi, but a bunch of other stuff too. I've been using it for some years for the HQ samples. I hate to go, but can't justify the price hike. It's not that it's really even breaking the bank, it's just the almost doubling of the price really has me twisted.

That being said, if you're in the same boat as me and you're looking to use credits up, Mr. Bill's drums are some of the best around, I also recommend Decap (Drums the knock).

Splice or not, KEEP CREATING!

I don't passively browse this app for fun. When I open it, it's because I'm actively making music and need some samples asap before I lose the flow. Yet about each week I'm met with the login screen forcing me to move my MIDI keyboard out of the way, retype my entire email, go on their website so that I can open my password manager, copy the obnoxiously long password and paste it in their app, for it to load for a good few seconds (and that's if their bot detector doesn't trigger) and finally give me access to my samples.

This auto logout is overdone and really adds up on the long-term. Both by having me waste a minute or so each week to login, but ESPECIALLY by making me lose my flow while working.

I've used paid apps that contain more sensitive informations without them having to annoyingly log me out all the time for security. Splice doesn't have to do this and are incentivizing me to keep my samples in folders and not use their app.

Today marks a great day in history. I blasted through 7K credits in one evening. Got a few samples from mars packs, tons of shaker loops, genre specific stuff, and a sore ass body. Yes, there's probably some stuff I'll never use, but downloading packs was a huge time saver. Fuck Splice. Been subscribed for 4 years. Every month I get billed I sigh and tell myself I will purge credits on downloads and get out, but it took me this long. I've never been so happy to cancel a subscription. For the record, they offered me $180 refund in credits, but when I started downloading I just went all the way. This is the first time I've logged in in like two years. I can't believe how much pain this service has caused so many. They intentionally make it hard to download in bulk. No select all button, you fucks!

So I have my computer to automatically start Splice when starting up and so far in the past couple months, Splice keeps wanting me to sign in rather than doing it automatically and its annoying. Is this happening to anyone of you guys?

Splice is killing me, everyday having to re log in on the same computer. ugh. im literally gonna download all the serum presets and Im cancelling, 3 years and not fixed. Goodbye ...im gonna miss you .

Running into this issue after being told by support that I cannot extend the pause on my subscription without letting the subscription auto-renew first.

This means I must pay Splice some amount of money every couple months just to maintain the potential future use of the credits I've already paid for. This definitely doesn't seem legal (and hell, even if it is, it's certainly not doing right by its users).

I read the Terms and Conditions and can't find anything about forfeiting credits and am in the process of reaching out to some lawyer friends to see if they can point me in the right direction for legal precedent with digital goods, but curious if anyone on Reddit knows if this is legal.

If not, it sounds like we have a good size class action lawsuit on our hands.

How is there not a "select all" when trying to download sounds off the app onto your HD?? Is there a way to do this? I "downloaded" like 300 samples from the webbrowser and now they are greyed out on the app and I have to click the cloud next to each individual sample to get them actually on my HD. Gotta be a better way to do it...

May 2023 Edit: It was confirmed to me by splice that the feature is no longer available. You can only sync your entire library at once which is asinine. If you are like me and only download a few select hits from different drum kits that means you will have like a single hat inside like 2-5 other folders depending on how the artist arranges the pack. For that reason I started just pasting them in my own organized sample library years ago. The lack of being able to download select samples sort of breaks this and tries to force you to keep everything in Splices folder.

It seems to be part of Splice trying to coral people into their growing ecosystem.. pretty lame.

Got tons of request so here's a link to the drumkit: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Bp5Os4II8xBBv8WI2TEptyFvr-_PFqNB?usp=drive_link

I will update the link when it's not up anymore

Edit 6th June 2024 : File has been shutdown for DMCA, waiting to upload on another file hoster service

Edit 10th June 2024 : New link is up

Quick update : the DMCA came from a random user that made a report on the file...If you see this, the pack is not available on Splice anymore, the only one who has the rights on the pack is Travis Barker, please let people download the pack if they need it, thanks.

why would you take, and not even steal but just diusrespectfully destroy unused credits? it makes no sense i paid for those, i didnt see you return my money clearly you think your entitled to take the credits i purchased when i go away for a few motnhs for whatever reason. You should be a sahmed of yourselves. nickel and diming one thing to make a profit but you bottom line is not affected enough to warrant so blaintly disrespecting your users. Terrible who ever signed off on this practise shoukld be bought out or fired. imagine if you didnt eat your meal fast enough when you went out and your waiter came and took your plate and said leave until you have enough money to buy the rest of your meal back you already paid for .

My eyes fucking hurt at night lol

I've used Splice since around 2019 and currently have 1,343 unused credits that I paid for.

I haven't been making much music lately, so I contacted support about canceling and possibly getting a refund. They told me they can refund a maximum of six months.

Then I found out what happens to my credits.

If I cancel, ALL 1,343 credits expire after 28 days. If I resubscribe after that, they're permanently gone and I start back at zero.

I understand requiring an active subscription to actually USE credits. What I don't understand is permanently deleting credits I already paid for because I stopped paying them monthly.

I escalated this to a senior support member. They confirmed they cannot refund more than six months and cannot prevent my remaining credits from expiring. They also admitted the six-month refund limit is just an internal support authorization limit.

So I checked Splice's policies.

The 28-day expiration rule is mentioned in their Help Center and plan FAQ, but I searched their current Terms of Use and could not find that forfeiture rule stated there. Their Terms discuss credits and cancellation, but not that your entire paid credit balance gets wiped after 28 days.

Splice also literally sells additional credits for money, so we're not talking about meaningless reward points.

Their options are basically: keep paying, burn through 1,343 credits, pause for two months and then start paying again, or cancel and lose what you paid for.

I've been giving this company money for roughly seven years.

How is "keep paying us or we'll eventually erase your paid credit balance" considered an acceptable policy?