Meet Splice, a Source Controlled Music Creation Program - The UpStream

Long-time readers and listeners of the show will know of my love for mainly two things: cool tech toys and music (and the Giants, but they shall not be discussed right now). That being said, obviously things like Spotify quickly grab my attention and interest. So when I discovered the music-tech startup Splice, the situation was no different.

Splice is interesting because they take on music in a different way. First, the company is all about making the music creation process easier. For those who are not tech-savvy and wish to collaborate with artists or producers around the world, the programs and systems in place or either too difficult for the novice to use, or they're way too outdated and cumbersome, like MegaUpload. Second, the company introduces the music-making process to the tech world, head-on. How? By including version control so that changes can be made on the fly without worrying about undoing the others' work, or waiting for them to send you back the revision. It's kind of like a hybrid between GitHub and Team Foundation Server in that regard.

Splice's Steve Martocci puts it like this in a blog post,

Splice streamlines the fragmented process of creating and sharing music, freeing musicians to spend their time and energy on the creative process. Splice simplifies music creation by bringing all of the steps into one, frictionless digital home. The Splice community provides artists with a new means to connect with fans and other artists to solicit feedback throughout every step of the creative process - from ideation to the finished product. Founded by entrepreneurs Steve Martocci and Matt Aimonetti, Splice is located in New York City, NY and Santa Monica, CA.

Splice, currently in a private beta, integrates nicely with the popular software Ableton Live versions 8 and 9. Saving projects is easy once you install Splice; the program creates a "Splice" folder, letting you save your projects in Ableton right to the cloud, kind of like SkyDrive. Others can then access and work on their own versions on their own time and Splice automatically keeps up with all the tracks, samples, edit, cuts and more. All the artist has to do is make music, which is exactly what they wanted to do in the first place.

So far the company has raised $2.75 million in private funding and this little startup really looks promising. I can assure you I will be the first to update everyone on how Splice pans out, and hopefully we'll see them add integration into things like Pro Tools and Audition once more funding is acquired. For now, I'm playing with Ableton and learning how to use a new sequencer, so I can play around with the nifty idea that is Splice.