On Oct. 17, online music creation and collaboration site Splice announced progress on several fronts including artist payouts, label acquisitions and launch of their indie-oriented Splice Creator Initiative. When making audio samples, the hope is always that they will groove once integrated into a song—Splice is creating a remunerative and nurturing cloud-based environment for that art.

The bottom-line number on remunerations is $10 million in royalty payments to sample-music creators, paid since 2015. This is accompanied by the encouraging trend that these regular payments doubled in the last year. This is of course vital to artists such as Karra and Krs. who've recently been able to make a livelihood based on sample creation.

As described in Billboard, Splice has also acquired the Capsun ProAudio and Sample Magic labels, which specialize in samples. "Until now, it's been very difficult for those that create all these musical elements to have a consistent platform to release our work, never mind a regular income stream," said Sample Magic's founder Sharooz Raoofi. "Splice is really creating a new world order for musicians of all stripes."

The Splice Creator Initiative intends to spread this "new world order" across a wider community of musical artists including those hoping to get in business licensing their own samples. Capsun ProAudio founder Jay Pulman is coming on board to serve as the initiative's creative director. "We can finally pull back the curtain for sound creators and enable them to focus on making the best sounds by supporting them with a wide array of resources," he said, "from financial investment to best practices for sample creation."

Splice Chief Business Officer Jonathan Lee calls sound-creation in samples "collaborative content," which points to the advantage of streamlining licensing agreements and payouts through their dedicated online platform. "We are actively developing a new music industry at Splice," Lee said, "one that doesn't rely solely on the product of finished songs or albums. Individuals who create samples, loops, and other sonic content for other creators to use...should have an opportunity to be compensated just like songwriters and performers."

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