Speed of Implementation and Media Creation
Many of us have side projects that lose momentum during busy periods, or we have ideas but don't get around to exploring them. I recently reflected on the question of whether creative projects really require that much time. How can I close the gap between coming up with an idea, and putting something out into the world? Is time inherently connected to the quality of a work? Do things that take longer to complete (say, a work of art, or a tasty meal) provide better experiences? Could the way we frame the challenge of creation contain assumptions that aren't actually that relevant for the way we enjoy creative works?
Why do artisinal products and the arts attract a premium? Limited supply, proprietary methods or technologies, but also, a subtle association with time, often embedded in the brand narrative. The "artisan" takes his/her time crafting and creating - whether that be a book, a composition, a recipe, a sculpture. Ideas need to sit and stew. You get a year for an album cycle. I have no idea how long a painting typically takes, but I did have a friend who was persistently between projects, flitting from one thing to another without really knowing where the endpoint lay (he rarely held exhibitions and ended up burning all his works...). Speed of implementation isn't a thing for the artisan - it flies against the tradition of mastery. Look at the semiotics behind heritage brands, look at luxury ads. There's a subtle relationship between time, process, and quality. Good things take time.
Focusing in on digital media, we are familiar with "the great unbundling" that took place as digital media libraries replaced the humble bookshelf. The phenomenon of cherry-picking between songs, scenes in a movie, highlights in a sporting event, chapters of a book; these things became the norm through the 2000's. But content is now being re-bundled into streams, playlists, subscriptions, niche newsletters - formats that don't really have a beginning nor an end. It's like the mediatization of the infinite scroll you get in e-commerce platforms, you tune in and the content keeps coming.
And this is where my thoughts have been. As a hobbyist musician, surely it makes more sense to stop focusing on "composing" and to double down on improvisation. Improvisation has no beginning, nor an end. It certainly has motifs, movements, moments of calm and tension. But you don't miss anything by tuning in halfway. You just sort of "enter the flow".
Youtube streams are fascinating - especially the ones where it is essentially a bot powering the music selection (you get a lot of clumsy mixing, affectionately referred to as a "truck driver's gear change"). You have a catalog of music, and the stream goes on 24/7 alongside a real-time chat with fans from around the world. You could argue podcasts will always be formatted according to some chronology, a series of episodes with a logical thread. But services exist that aggregate snippets of multiple stories or segments (news in particular) into custom programming. So actually what you end up with is an audio newsfeed where the individual posts represent clips of things that matter and are of interest to you.
Are we moving towards a time where content has no beginning nor an end? Our attention spans are (seemingly) becoming shorter, and choices are becoming more difficult to make. What do we do? We default, and gravitate toward that newsfeed or music stream that's sure to have something we like. We've offloaded the cherry-picking to algos and simply rock up when it suits us. The importance of genres is being questioned. The importance of individual artists is being questioned. When voice interfaces go mainstream, and computers become contextually aware, maybe people will be making less structured requests: "hey [digital music service] I'm feeling a bit nostalgic and want something to make me feel at home this fine evening". What genre is that? New wave soul? Value is accruing at the interfaces, and to the aggregators of content that brand themselves as the "go to place" for a certain kind of feeling or experience. They have the direct relationship with the time-starved, overwhelmed end user, who needs someone to help make sense of the available content and provide a seamless user experience.
To begin answering my own question, I think it makes more sense as an individual creator to create long-form improvisational recordings along the lines of a podcast, where fans of can just tune in when it suits them. It's always there for them, being refreshed on an ongoing basis, catering to focused listening sessions, or incidental background music. I don't need to think about "writing songs" or "recording albums". I can flip the whole process: record > edit/produce > publish > retrospectively compose songs from the best bits of the streams >re-record in the format of a typical song (this last step is totally optional). Maybe ambient music is truly pioneering in this regard - it isn't determined by any particular format - a single song can be 20 minutes long.
The task now is to actually make the recordings - back to speed of implementation.