Personally, I have a weird relationship with Splice.

Sure, it's cool to have a tool that speeds up your workflow like that. But in the end, we still end up stuck in some kind of template, reusing the same one-shots over and over. That's why, over the years, I've accumulated a ridiculous number of unused credits.

Buying entire sample packs just doesn't seem worth it to me.

Using melodic samples from Splice, in my opinion, is straight-up insane. For example, check out this breakdown.

Yeah, you can sample, pitch it, slow it down, speed it up, whatever—but using them raw? Not a good idea. Why? Because even if you've paid for a subscription, there's no guarantee you won't get hit with a copyright strike. These samples have been used by beatmakers before you, and Splice doesn't protect you from that.

Which is weird, right? I thought we were getting royalty-free, cleared samples?

The Credit System Problem

My issue with Splice is how their credit system works.

To me, it's bizarre: you pay for credits, and later you keep paying just to retain access to what you already own. Otherwise, it all just disappears.

In my humble opinion, subscriptions are the worst thing capitalism ever came up with.

Why can't we just buy credits and use them until we run out? Oh, that's easy—greed.

Of course, that's a key trait of any corporation that makes money off creative professionals.

Why isn't there an option that's actually loyal to regular working folks?

An Alternative Solution

Anyway, while I was looking into how to train a neural net on a Splice dataset, I was searching for a library that could work with Splice's API.

And by accident, I stumbled across an alternative frontend for Splice.

No login required. No nagging you to renew your subscription.

Now, you don't have to pay every month just to keep access to the credits you've already paid for. Browse samples, loops, and one-shots without a subscription—and when you're ready, just activate the sub and clear the samples properly, if you're an honest, decent person.

This client includes all the main features of the official app:

• Clean filtering
• Search by genre, mood, key, BPM
• Drag & drop support

It used to be Windows-only, but I know a lot of people wanted to try it—so I made a small contribution to the project and built a Mac version.

Enjoy!