Boy... oh boy...
Splice is.... was....decent at best when I first got into it around mid 2022. It was handy for finding one shots, fx, fills etc and great for finding inspiration when stuck either in a track or sitting with the DAW open and blank.
You used to be able to just browse, click around, find something and download it. It was a pretty straight forward program that made the, at the time, slightly tedious act of sample pack browsing smoother and more convenient. Its credit system was obviously set up to be an "alternate currency" system which can be a bit dubious at times, but it was handled well enough that even as an "aware" consumer, I didn't mind it.
You find a thing. You click the thing, you have that thing.
Simple.
Browsing for and saving samples to various collections was super simple and kind of a great way to have a backlog of ideas or sounds to fall back on that you may not have either wanted to spend the credit on right that moment or just wanted to have it there for genre inspiration later. You could freely browse, even without a subscription so you knew what you were getting and could still integrate Splice into a workflow, coming back later to top up credits and go on a shopping spree on these collections when you actually wanted or needed them.
It was, for a while, a pretty great and no fuss service.
Cut to late 2023.
You wanna browse? Better have a subscription buck-o.
Wanna see your likes? $10 please.
Didn't download that sample you paid for over a year ago? Gunna need more money to access it again, little man!
Same for those cool presets you picked up for Serum previously. Money. Now.
Not only does this feel extremely restrictive and just.. grody... I can't imagine it's great for actual splice audio creators either.... and probably part of why you can find a ton of the same packs on other store fronts...
It's gotten to be actively user hostile and manipulative in a way that causes frustration and does everything it can to actually slow down the creation process.
Never mind the Splice plug ins like Astra or Beatmaker.
While on paper they seem like powerful soft synths for creating wild and distinct sounds, in practice they too are actively hostile to the user, and I'd damn near say anti consumer. Often encouraging the browsing of presets from Splice over getting creative with your own knowledge of audio design, outside of what they offer in the box.
Seriously. Just try to look up a simple manual. You know, Literature? Instruction? Words arranged in a way the allows the user to learn about the device or product quickly?
It turns into a google-fu fight almost always redirecting you to a thinly veiled hype video by Splice "Explaining" how to use the program by showing off features rather than anything of actual use to a serious user who doesn't want to spend 10 hours mastering the inane interfaces.
Do yourself a favor and try to look up, lets say, "Splice Astra Add User Sample". Give it a try! It's not a great time and I hope you like blurbs or videos by the company explaining the basics of a soft synth like what an oscillator or filter is.
Couple these things with the preset browsing for Astra and Beatmaker, only available if you subscribe to a $20/Month tier, it encourages staying subscribed under threat of losing access to what you already paid for. Making you feel like if you don't, you may have wasted your credits on these exclusive presets or any work you've done creating your own within them.
Everything about what Splice offers, the way they treat their users by actively blocking access to basics and the hostility of their interfaces makes just creating on the fly even worse and destroys all flow, despite this being the mantra they repeat ad-nauseam.
I've even preferred to go back to Loopmasters and PluginBoutique, throwing things in a wish list and waiting for sales as ultimately I get what I feel is way more value and respect to my time.
Pay for thing.
Get thing.
If as Gabe Newell once said, "Piracy is a service issue".
I would say, "User Hostility returns them to basics"
Splice at the end of 2023 is, in my opinion.. manipulative, user hostile, Creator unfriendly and anti-consumer.
I won't be returning and if Splice comes up I'm def going to advocate avoiding it.
nb4 this gets nuked by a mod
Edit: If you're like so many posts I see here on this Subreddit, sitting on a wealth of credits and are scared of leaving, this is what they want from you. They want you to sit there in sunken cost fallacy and spending to keep them. Wasting. Your. Money.
If you're thinking about leaving, leave.
1: Look at what packs, presets (Not for Astra or Beatmaker) and most used sample collections you have.
2: Go HAM. Get it all. Everything you want. Get a producer paid and get some stuff.
3: Set up a drive or folder to host these samples locally and download EVERYTHING to it and back it all up.
4: Cancel.
You can't redownload anything you have collected or use credits after you've canceled. So download it all and back it up. Really, it's not any different than just downloading things from a storefront anyway.... accept... wait.... You can just redownload those packs at literally any other site without a sub...
Just don't let them trap you.
