Get It Out
I mentioned iCompositions in the last couple of posts and I have to say at its peak in the late 2000's, it was a pretty vibrant community. What eventually brought it its knees was the mass exodus that took place to Facebook. Facebook stole from iCompositions the very people who were communicative in the forums. With the added freedom to discuss politics and whatever else that was banned on the iComp forum, there was enough pent up energy for Web2.0 denizens to head over to Facebook. By the time 2014 rolled around, you had the feeling that only the die hards for music were still hanging around.
The pattern with most artist was that they posted one song and were done. I don't know if this is what Steve Jobs had in mind when he bundle Garageband for free with the Mac, but the vast majority of people that showed up to iCompositions had 1 song, and they were done. The community itself was made up of stayers who had much more than 1 song. The stayers generally had about 30 songs they had recorded which they would bring in and that catalogue would be their calling card. Then, they would either manage to settle into a groove of producing something every week or every fortnight, and maybe get up to 80 or so tracks. Most artists who had the staying power to produce 50, probably had the staying power to produce 80-100. Artists who produced 100 tracks were actually the rarer breed. 200 was very impressive and anything over 500 was probably a cause to suspect OCD more than creative genius.
While one couldn't judge much from just quantity, once could get a sense of the commitment of an artist from how regularly people posted and how many tracks they had piled up. And so, it was like a war of attrition where you were always looking for a new idea, a new angle and a new way to get to a song. I don't know if I would willingly put myself into that environment again - I kind of feel like my modus operandi has evolved significantly enough that it's not compatible with that mode of rushing something new out regularly. That, was hard work
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