Latest news with #SpitfireAudio
Associated Press
28-04-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Splice to Supercharge Music Creation Ecosystem with Acquisition of Spitfire Audio, Positioning Itself to Lead in the $7B Music Software and Services Sector
NEW YORK and LONDON, April 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Splice, the leading platform for music creation, has announced the acquisition of Spitfire Audio, the UK's premier developer of high-end virtual instrument libraries. The acquisition marks Splice's entry into the fast-growing plugin space – the plugin market alone is valued at $640 million, while the wider music software and services sector exceeds $7 billion – adding to the company's Splice Sounds subscriptions and rent-to-own businesses. Since launching its flagship Splice Sounds platform in 2015, Splice has become a cornerstone of modern music production and is home to the industry's highest-quality sample catalog, where one million sounds are downloaded every day. With a global community of over 10 million music producers and creators, Splice is already the largest ethical AI-powered platform used by music producers, with 40% of Splice users embracing the platform's AI empowerment tools. Founded in 2007, Spitfire Audio has cemented its place as a creative powerhouse for composers, producers, artists, and musicians. The beloved British company provides virtual instrument libraries, including recordings by Hans Zimmer, Olafur Arnalds, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Abbey Road Studios. 'The teams at Spitfire Audio and Splice have deep respect for composers, musicians, and producers and are committed to celebrating and supporting their work,' said Kakul Srivastava, CEO of Splice. 'We're both sound-first, creator-led companies who believe great software and technology can supercharge the creative experience. Our shared vision is to develop tools that expand—not replace—human creativity,' Srivastava added. 'With Spitfire's expressive instruments and Splice's AI-powered platform, we're just beginning to explore what's possible.' The companies are set to start work on new products that blend Spitfire Audio's cinematic soundscapes and orchestral expertise with Splice's sample catalog and AI-powered discovery engine. 'We've always focused on inspiring people to create extraordinary music,' said Paul Thomson, Co-Founder of Spitfire Audio. 'With Splice, we can now bring that inspiration to a whole new generation of artists, producers, and storytellers.' The combined company is positioned to lead in a music creation market projected to nearly double to $14 billion by 2031. 'Splice has already built an incredible business,' added Olivier Robert-Murphy, CEO of Spitfire Audio. 'Joining forces means Spitfire Audio's sounds will find new homes in studios around the world—whether that's a bedroom producer or a blockbuster composer.' Both Splice and Spitfire Audio will continue to operate independently in the near term. Robert-Murphy will remain CEO of Spitfire Audio, reporting to Srivastava, while Thomson will continue to oversee Spitfire Audio's creative direction. About Splice Splice is the leading platform for music creation, empowering a global community of musicians, producers, and sound designers with the tools to bring their ideas to life. The company is home to the industry's highest-quality royalty-free sound sample library and a suite of sophisticated AI tools that help creators unlock inspiration, experiment with sound, and generate unique compositions. Splice also provides affordable access to plugins and DAWs through a rent-to-own gear marketplace. For more information, visit About Spitfire Audio Spitfire Audio is the leading creator of sounds and sample libraries for music makers, uniting pioneering artists with pioneering sounds and music technology. Partnering with outstanding affiliates, including the world's most exceptional composers and musicians, celebrated recording studios Abbey Road and AIR Studios, and the renowned BBC Symphony Orchestra, has cemented Spitfire Audio's global reputation as the premier sound library company. For more information, visit Media Contact For Splice: [email protected] For Spitfire Audio: [email protected] View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Splice
The Guardian
19-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘We're projecting into the future': sounds of BBC Radiophonic Workshop made available for public use
With its banks of bafflingly complex equipment, and staff members that were among the most progressive musical minds in the UK, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was a laboratory of 20th-century sound that produced endless futuristic effects for use in TV and radio – most memorably, the ghostly wail of the Doctor Who theme. Now, the Workshop's considerable archive of equipment is being recreated in new software, allowing anyone to evoke the same array of analogue sound that its pioneering engineers once did. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop's archivist Mark Ayres has collaborated with BBC Studios and Spitfire Audio, a company that provides libraries of sampled sound for music producers to work with. Added to their library is a collection of the Workshop's machinery, allowing users to, in effect, control the modular synthesisers, tape machines, vocoders and other equipment that was originally used as far back as the 1950s. There is also a library of sounds from the original Workshop tapes, plus newly recorded sounds by the – now fairly aged – members of the Workshop. 'I'm the youngest member of the core Radiophonic Workshop – and I'm 64,' said Ayres. 'We're not going to be around for ever. It was really important to leave a creative tool, inspired by our work, for other people to use going forward. I hope we've made an instrument that will inspire future generations.' 'We're not just looking back at what the members were doing way back when,' added Harry Wilson, Spitfire Audio's head of recording. 'We're projecting a strand of their work into the future and saying: if the Workshop was engaged with a similar process now, what would it sound like?' The Workshop may be best known for the Doctor Who theme, but it also created music and sound effects for other sci-fi shows such as Quatermass and the Pit, Blake's 7 and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Other cornerstone BBC shows such as Blue Peter and Tomorrow's World were also beneficiaries of the Workshop's creativity. The Workshop was originally created in 1958, tasked with adding an extra dimension to plays and other shows on Radio 3. Co-founders Daphne Oram and Desmond Briscoe were brilliant and high-minded, inspired by musique concrète – the style that asserted that raw, tape-recorded sound could be a kind of music. Before long a highly experimental, even fantastical means of composition was afoot, with lampshades being bashed to produce percussion, and long tape loops being carried along BBC corridors. 'There was freedom to do what you wanted and everyone was determined to do new things with sound,' one composer, Paddy Kingsland, has said. 'It was dusty and pokey, underfunded and peculiar, but I bet there were very few places that wonderful in the world.' Numerous Workshop staff became acclaimed composers in their own right, particularly the female alumni, including Oram, Delia Derbyshire and Glynis Jones. The Workshop ran until 1998, though its staff have since combined to form the Radiophonic Workshop, performing the unit's material live. In 2012, the BBC and Arts Council England created a new version of the Workshop to run online, headed up by the musician Matthew Herbert. During the 1960s, bands such as Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones' Brian Jones popped in to have their minds expanded by the Workshop's experimental spirit, and numerous artists have been influenced by it. The naive yet eerie music the Workshop made for children's programming seemed to seep into the subconscious of a generation of leftfield musicians, from Boards of Canada to Broadcast and the artists on the Ghost Box label. The Human League and Heaven 17 musician Martyn Ware, who later collaborated with the Workshop's members, has said: 'When we started out with our two basic keyboards bought on hire purchase, the Radiophonic Workshop represented a kind of dreamland, this magical place where any sound could be made.' Oscar-winning film composer Hans Zimmer is also an admirer. After purchasing the BBC's Maida Vale studios, where the Workshop was based, he has overseen the creation of a new synthesiser called the Radiophonic. Announced in 2024 and created by AJH Synth, it is designed to combine various analogue synths into a 'one-of-a-kind, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-style super-synth', Zimmer has said. The newly available software will cost £149, and is available from 19 February, though it will have an introductory price of £119 until 17 March.
