Sample libraries are here to stay – so why do some producers still find their use illegitimate?When Afrojack discovered that Fred again.. had used a Splice sample pack on ten – a track from his newly-released album ten days – he found it “disappointing”, as he recalled in a recent interview.
While Afrojack was quick to acknowledge Fred again..’s talent, his comments illuminate a viewpoint still held by more traditional DJs and producers: using pre-made Splice samples and loops is cheating. According to such purists, everything from synth sounds to samples should be created from the ground up for a recording to be authentic.

READ MORE: Splice CEO Kakul Srivastava on sampling: “It’s how young people create now”

It calls to mind that quote about skinning your goat to make a snare drum — but it’s true that stacking a bunch of pre-made loops and samples on top of each other without any original elements is difficult to pass off as your composition. But does interspersing your creations with Splice samples really delegitimise or subtract from the final product?

Sampling and synthesis from the ground up is a time-consuming process and, especially in an economy where regular releases are seen as paramount, finding regular hits of inspiration – like in loop and sample libraries – is crucial. If someone else has already created the perfect sound which complements your project and you’ve paid for it, why not use it?
In the case of an artist like Fred again.. – one of the world’s most popular electronic music stars – regular releases are perhaps less important than for an artist who’s just starting out. So maybe Afrojack’s implication that established artists not bogged down by such demands should take their time to create everything themselves is more valid.
But in any case, recording music has always been about making the best use of the tools at one’s disposal.
We have the tools to speed up the production process, so by choosing not to use them in pursuit of the often esoteric notion of ‘authenticity’, producers risk falling behind. By shunning sample packs as an idea altogether, they might miss out on an opportunity to inject a track with that little bit of magic to make it a hit.
Splice success stories are common, but none are more high-profile than Sabrina Carpenter’s 2024 smash hit, Espresso. With well over a billion streams on Spotify at the time of writing, it’s inarguably one of the biggest tracks of the summer. And it was created, largely, using a Splice sample pack.

Created by Oliver, a popular Splice loop maker who’s also had his work used in Doja Cat’s Say So, among others, the Power Tools Sample Pack III features a number of loops which were obviously pretty unchanged before they were used in Espresso.
Just scroll down to a file named ‘OLIVER_104_pop_loop_surf_dad_rhythm_lead_C.wav’ and you’ll instantly recognise the track’s distinctive clean chord stabs. Or listen to ‘OLIVER_105_drum_loop_disco_live_feel.wav’ to hear the song’s drum loop in isolation.
Of course, the degree to which someone might find Splice sample usage to be egregious depends on how much it’s used, and while Espresso relies heavily on loops, the bassline is a new creation for the song, and Carpenter’s catchy vocals – which make it the hit it is – are all original.
And as Splice tells MusicTech, sample libraries are helping close the proficiency gap between more skilled and less skilled producers: “There will always be producers with more technical skill than others, but why would anyone gate-keep creativity?”
“We believe that music production has been underserved by technology, and now is the time to make it even more accessible,” the company goes on. “That doesn’t mean quality won’t always rise to the top, but if we’ve seen anything over the past 10 years, it’s that music production is increasingly global. There are new audiences opening up every day. Over 50 per cent of our users don’t live in North America.”
Ultimately, music production is an inherently niche and nerdy space, with many different ways of working and therefore many opposing opinions as to how something should be done. The ratio of music producers to music listeners is acutely small, so this is naturally going to foster a somewhat elitist mentality.
It’s easy to get bogged down with how music ‘should’ be recorded, and forget why we’re all here in the first place: to make music that connects with and inspires people. And if a little Splice usage helps achieve that goal, what’s the problem?
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