For the first time, Splice, a music-tech company that offers a library of sounds and samples for music creators, has released an end-of-the-year report about the platform’s usage.

Splice has been around since 2013, providing musicians and producers a treasure trove of sounds. Their library boasts millions of samples and loops that can be used freely without worrying about royalties. These sounds have been embraced by creators of all levels, from bedroom hobbyists to career producers behind chart-topping hits with big names like Justin Bieber, Bad Bunny, Taylor Swift, Travis Scott, etc.

Splice has users in virtually every country worldwide, but it is particularly popular in its top ten markets: U.S., U.K., Germany, Canada, France, Brazil, South Korea, Australia, Italy, and India; with 44% of its registered users identifying as Gen Z.

In the report, Splice covers several sounds that have struck a chord with its users - from Amapiano to Hip-Hop / Rap, Phonk, Electronic / Dance, K-Pop, Latin, Country.

African Music

Most notably, downloads for sounds tagged as “amapiano,” a South African dance music genre often featuring log drums, are up 826% year-over-year. Its searches are up 309%, and it is trending in 17 cities. In Los Angeles, the highest trending city for the genre, its growth is up 1,003% year-over-year. It is also popular among Atlanta producers, surging 956% in the city this year.

According to the creative director of Splice Sounds, Jay “Capsun” Pulman “the discrepancy in downloads versus searches for amapiano suggests that users might not know to look up this nascent genre by name through their search bar. However, they’re still gravitating towards it when it’s featured in other ways on the site.”

Meanwhile, sounds that are tagged as “afrobeats” or “afropop” have declined by 45%, particularly in African metropolises like Lagos, Nigera. Splice believes this is because “users want authentic sounds from more specific Afro genres rather than generic samples that fall under a larger umbrella.”

Hip-Hop / Rap

Hip-hop remains the most popular genre on Splice, accounting for 19% of total downloads. Still, the genre is down 11% from 2022. This may foreshadow continued difficulties for hip-hop music on the charts.

This year was widely considered to be an especially stagnant year for the highly-streamed genre, and that was reflected on the Billboard charts: August 2023 marked a full year since a rap song had been No. 1 on the Hot 100 – the first time this has happened in 23 years.

Still, 86% of Splice users downloaded a hip-hop sample in 2023, and 57% of Splice users told the company in a recent survey that hip-hop interests them most when searching for samples. Pulman adds that producers who are making hip-hop, for example, might use sounds tagged as other genres in eventually creating hip-hop songs.