How to Split a Song Into Stems (Free, No Credit Card)
Turn any track into separate vocals, drums, bass, and other stems in a few minutes, straight from your browser.
A "stem" is one isolated layer of a song: just the vocals, just the drums, just the bass, or everything else grouped together. Splitting a finished track back into stems used to need the original studio session files. Today an AI model can pull them apart from a normal MP3 with surprising accuracy, and you can do it for free.
Why split a song into stems?
- Karaoke and instrumentals: remove the vocals to sing over the backing track.
- Acapellas for remixing: keep only the vocal to drop into a new beat.
- Sampling: lift a clean drum break or bassline without the rest of the mix bleeding in.
- Practice and transcription: solo the bass or drums to learn a part by ear.
- Mixing reference: hear how a record balances its individual layers.
Step by step with Song Splitter
- Open the app and sign in. Go to stemsplits.com and sign in with Google. There is no separate password to create and no credit card required.
- Try the free 30 second preview first. Run a short preview of any upload to hear how cleanly it separates. It only processes the first 30 seconds, so it comes back quickly, and it never uses one of your daily fast splits.
- Upload your audio. Drag in an MP3, WAV, FLAC, or other common format. Fast splits take files up to 50 MB or 30 minutes, the slower CPU lane up to 25 MB or 15 minutes. Higher quality source audio gives cleaner stems.
- Run the split. The AI separates the track into four stems: Vocals, Drums, Bass, and Other (guitars, keys, synths, and everything that is not the first three). There is also a 6-stem option that pulls guitar and piano out of Other. Both are free for everyone, but the piano stem is experimental and can bleed back into Other, so check it before you rely on it.
- Download what you need. Grab each stem as a 192kbps MP3, or use the custom mix option to combine a few stems (for example Drums, Bass, and Other) into a single instrumental. The player also has an A–B loop for auditioning a section, plus BPM and key detection.
- Find them later. Completed stems are also saved to your own Google Drive, so they are easy to reach from your phone or laptop.
Fast splits vs slow splits
Both lanes are free. Fast (GPU) splits run on dedicated hardware and usually finish in a few minutes. You get 5 of those per day, and the counter resets at midnight UTC. Once you have used all 5, you can either come back tomorrow or switch to the slow lane.
The slow (CPU) option is unlimited and never counts against your daily 5. It just takes longer, so it suits an overnight batch more than a session where you are waiting on the file. Nothing is ever charged either way.
Tips for the cleanest stems
- Start with the best quality file you have. A 320 kbps MP3 or a lossless WAV beats a low bitrate file.
- Dense mixes with many overlapping instruments are harder to separate, so expect a little bleed between stems on busy sections.
- For an instrumental, download every stem except Vocals, or use the custom mix to build it in one file.
- For an acapella, keep only the Vocals stem.
Do I need to install anything?
No. Everything runs in the browser, so there is nothing to download or set up, and it works the same on a phone or a computer. If you only want an instrumental or an acapella, see our guide on removing vocals from a song.