Farewell Sounds.com

Ed M
Ed M Member Posts: 148 Advisor
in Tech Talks

Just received an email today:

We’re writing to let you know that we will be retiring Sounds.com on June 30th, 2023. We appreciate you for being a Sounds.com subscriber in the past and hope that you’ll continue your journey with the Native Instruments family.

Our teams will now focus on delivering new sounds and instruments through the Komplete Now subscription which includes fan-favorites like PLAYBOX, ALICIA’s KEYS, and DUETS as well as MASSIVE X, BATTERY and more. We invite you to try it for free for one month to explore the offering.

In addition we will continue to release new instruments and sounds so check out our online store to find curated genres and an array of premium instruments to round out your studio.

Thank you,

—Your team at Sounds.com

Too bad Splice was already a household name when Sounds launched. Hindsight Sounds never stood a chance. Though the integration with Maschine was a nice quality of life feature, it had nothing else to offer to make it unique and outstanding.

I've been a Splice and Sounds subscriber for a few months. I ended up downloading random stuff just to use up my credits. At that point I ended my subscriptions, and only kept Arcade, which I still use frequently.

Did any of you had a similar experience?

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Comments

  • Tigersharc
    Tigersharc Member Posts: 59 Helper

    What I'm interested to see is how Komplete Now will absorb the subscription side of Sounds.com and maybe that is where we can continue to get samples....... I'm getting ready to check out the possibility since we get three months free.......

  • Reefius
    Reefius Member Posts: 251 Pro

    The Maschine and Komplete Kontrol "integration" was horrible. I have Loopcloud and just using their plugin already gives me much better integration than sounds.com ever had. I can actually hear everything in sync and inside my project before I buy any sounds.

    After NI stopped with the "integration" of sounds.com, I knew it wouldn't take long for them to abandon it completely. So I can't say I'm surprised by this news.

  • mspin
    mspin Member Posts: 3 Newcomer
    edited June 2023

    Will Komplete 15 (and/or other versions) become subscription only also?

    Someone on reddit was alleging/pontificating this to be the case, potentially even retroactively to already purchased software.

    I have no idea whether they know what they’re talking about or what, so thought it would be best to get legit answers here.

  • Monochrome
    Monochrome Member Posts: 1,132 Expert

    @mspin "Always treat speculations like these with a pinch of salt" is probably the most legit answer you can get for this. Realistically, no one knows what may happen in the future.

  • mspin
    mspin Member Posts: 3 Newcomer
    edited June 2023

    @Monochrome To be clear, my question isn’t aimed at getting more guesses (got enough of that with the redditors). My aim is for an NI resource to share what they can or know, as you said, if anything. (e.g @Jeremy_NI)

    Options are “No, not a chance”, “Yes, for certain”, “Hmm, don’t know lemme ask a key internal resource/exec/decision-maker, etc,” or somewhere in between.

    Somebody knows, to some degree or another. Question is when/whether they’ll say. 🤔

  • Cire Studios
    Cire Studios Member Posts: 2 Newcomer

    Here's a dumb question, does anyone know if all the sounds on sounds.com were royalty free? I've recently seen sound pack creators try and get percentage points for packs on royalty free sites like sounds.com.

    I have a record that goes into mixing/mastering this weekend that has sounds.com sounds and wanted to make sure things were good.

  • Gee_Flat
    Gee_Flat Member Posts: 906 Guru
    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/97699#Comment_97699

    I can't see the point if the sounds provided weren't usable in your projects. I imagine the UA states that you can't repackage and resell the content.

  • Cire Studios
    Cire Studios Member Posts: 2 Newcomer
    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/97701#Comment_97701

    That's what I thought, but I've seen samples on say wavs that are royalty free but then the sound pack creators want credit. I even spoke to one of the sound creators on sounds.com and they asked for credit for their "sample" which to me makes no sense because the site stated everything was royalty free and no sample clearance was needed.

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