Splice Music Collaboration Platform Launches, with $2.75 Million in Seed Funding
The quest for the ideal online music collaboration is on again.
One of the workflows that Splice users will encounter. (click to enlarge)
A space that had been relatively quiet for the last few years, collaborative platforms for music creation and sharing seem to be suddenly recapturing the attention of some accomplished online innovators. The latest arrival is Splice, a New York City-based technology platform for music creators, which announced today that it has raised $2.75 million in its seed round of funding.
Splice’s co-founder is Steve Martocci, a name that should be familiar to those who follow the venture-capital and M&A scene: Martocci previously co-founded the group messaging service GroupMe, which he and his partners sold to Skype in 2011 for a reported $80 million. His partner in launching splice is Matt Aimonetti, who previously played key engineering roles with LivingSocial and Sony PlayStation.
Splice’s seed round of funding was led by Union Square Ventures with participation from True Ventures, Lerer Ventures, SV Angel, First Round Capital, Code Advisors, David Tisch, Rob Wiesenthal, and Seth Goldstein. Andy Weissman, a partner at Union Square Ventures, will join the Splice board of directors. In addition to the company’s NYC headquarters, an LA office is planned for the near future.
Splice was designed with the intention of streamlining the process of creating, saving and sharing music by introducing collaboration and version control techniques to DAWs, with an early emphasis on Ableton Live. File management, backup, and sample management are all managed in a way that eases edits and changes, while sharing to a network of creators for collaboration and feedback, and publishing directly to a fan base.
The service is currently in private beta, but those interested in experiencing it can request an invite from the site. Visitors will also find a community site and blog at splice.com.
Splice is debuting right after the arrival of the another online musical collaboration platform, Blend.io. Blend has similar ambitions in its intent to shake up advance Internet-powered music creation, and it also has the financial backing to compete – the successful company builder BetaWorks is behind Blend.
On the surface, the offerings of Splice and Blend appear to have many similarities; either there will prove to be plenty of room for both services (and more), or eventually content creators will gravitate en masse to the one that more effectively exposes them to more fans and/or enhances their revenue streams.
However it shakes out, the suddenly increased competition in this previously stagnant space is good news. As music creation and social media tools become increasingly more sophisticated, it’s only logical that these two spheres will continue to converge and grow together.
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