Music creation marketplace Splice acquires Superpowered

The music marketplace, which houses an extensive library of samples and rent-to-own plugins, has become a go-to resource for producers and musicians. It currently has more than 3 million users on its platform.

Splice says the acquisition will see a number of new features built using Superpowered technology, which will be rolled out as soon as next month.

Superpowered provides powerful development tools for designing interactive audio apps across different devices and platforms such as Beatport and Byte, Hoopla Digital, Fishman, Libsyn, and Fishman, among others.

Additionally, Superpowered co-founder and chief technology officer Gabor Szanto​ has joined Splice as its first head of audio engineering.

The news follows Splice’s announcement in February that it had paid $25m to musicians. The move marks the company’s first major investment in audio technology. The platform has also raised $105m in funding to date.

“We created Splice with the mission of empowering musicians to realise their creative potential,” a Splice blogpost reads. “In joining forces with Superpowered, we’re excited to usher in a new era of creative technology that further empowers musicians to realise their creative potential.”

Szanto said: “Creating new, interactive audio experiences can be unnecessarily arduous and time-consuming, because most of the audio development world is still stuck in decades-old paradigms. Superpowered is changing this status quo, and we’re thrilled that Splice shares our vision. We look forward to joining forces and extending our reach to unlock even more juice in Superpowered’s technology.”

Following the news, there has been speculation that Splice could create its own browser-based digital audio workstation (DAW) or acquire an already-existing platform.

Meanwhile, since the COVID-19 lockdown started in the US in March, Splice says it has seen record activity of more than 1.1 million sound downloads per day – a 50% increase from pre-quarantine activity.

The company’s samples have recently been used on popular artists’ songs such as ‘Panini' (Lil Nas X), ‘New Rules’ (Dua Lipa ), ‘Break Up With Your Girlfriend I’m Bored’ (Ariana Grande’s) and ‘Running Over’ (Justin Bieber).

Splice Sounds is available for a $7.99 monthly subscription.