Splice, the online music marketplace for rights-cleared sounds and beats, has hired Adobe‘s Kakul Srivastava as its new CEO. Founder and CEO Steve Martocci will transition to executive chairman and chief strategy officer.
Srivastava arrives from Adobe, where she helped lead Creative Cloud’s customer journey efforts, including the desktop app for downloads and the new user journeys.
Having served on the Splice board of directors since 2021, Srivastava will utilize her comprehensive understanding of the company’s ethos to oversee product strategy and business operations, alongside driving its growth and profitability.
Founded by Steve Martocci and Matt Aimonetti in 2013, Splice allows its users, for a monthly fee, to acquire the tools needed to make music — loops, drum beats, different instruments and sounds both synthetic and analog — and use them fully licensed and royalty-free.
Splice boasts more than 4 million users accessing its expansive catalog of sounds with a library of over 2 million pre-cleared samples. The company recently expanded its creator offerings with the release of CoSo By Splice, an intelligent musical sketch pad designed for music makers to harness sound discovery.
Prior to Adobe, Srivastava was the VP of product and marketing at Github, where she instituted significant pricing model changes for the company. She was also the general manager of the photo-sharing service Flickr, where she brought in an additional 100M users, and as VP of apps at Yahoo, she led the re-architecture of Yahoo Mail.
With deeply held beliefs surrounding the importance of human connections at work and creativity, Srivastava also launched the mobile app, Tomfoolery, Inc. — designed to help teams run better through more open communication. She was co-founder and CEO of the company which was later acquired by Yahoo.
“In a world where everyone is a creator, Splice is building the essential toolset to make music,” says Srivastava. “Human creativity is our most important resource and I’m excited to build on the remarkable foundation laid by Steve and the world-class Splice team, to empower music creators globally.”
Moving to executive chairman and chief strategy officer, Martocci has had long-lasting success in the entrepreneurial world. He was a co-founder of Blade, the helicopter ride-sharing service, and GroupMe, a group text messaging service that was acquired by Skype.
Martocci has welcomed Srivastava into her new role and emphasized Srivastava as “dynamic, operational and empathetic,” someone who “deeply understands building products for creators. Kakul’s leadership will be the key to Splice accelerating growth, expanding its footprint and becoming an iconic company.”
In an interview for PvNew‘s Strictly Business podcast, Martocci detailed just how much Splice had expanded and defined itself over the pandemic, as more creatives spent time indoors tinkering with music production.
The company has made many new additions to its staff, rounding up to a total of over 200 employees — a third of which were hired during the pandemic.
“Artists, writers and producers; from the kids to the pros making hits — they need tech that understands how they work and allows them to be who they are and create the way they want to,” says Splice board member, Matt Pincus of investment firm Music. “Nobody is better at that than Kakul.”
