Generative.fm Patron Update

Hey folks, this might get long so I'll start with a summary in case you don't want to read everything:

• I'm trying to get user accounts finished by the end of the year.
• To help me get user accounts finished, I'm only making one more new piece this year. It will be added December 1st.
• I'll be releasing pieces less frequently going forward. Instead, I'll be spending more time on each one to make them the best I can.

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I'm sorry to say I'm still in the planning stages of adding user accounts. I haven't been able to work on it as much as I wanted to, so progress has been extremely slow. Almost all of my time spent working on Generative.fm over the last month has been making new pieces, which sort of sets the theme for the rest of this update. I'm trying to get this finished before the end of the year.

While I never explicitly stated that I'd release a new piece every week, it was a personal goal I set for myself at the beginning of 2019. This was a good way to force myself to come up with new ideas and practice building generative music systems, and I feel like it paid off. But by only giving myself a week to make each piece, I feel many of the them turned out at a lower quality than I'd like. Also, this pace meant most of the time I could spend on Generative.fm had to be used for new music instead of features or other projects that I'd like to work on (more about that later).

I currently plan to upload only one more piece this year, on December 1st. After that, I'll no longer be committed to uploading a new piece every week. Here's how I'll be spending my time instead:

• First, I'd like to finish adding user accounts to the site. I should be able to do this by the end of the year.
• I'll continue to add new features to Generative.fm based on your feedback.
• I'm considering redesigning and rebuilding Generative.fm entirely. This would be really helpful for accommodating new features some of you've been asking about.
• I have some ideas for new projects to work on that you might like. The one I'm currently most excited about is an app for you to build your own generative music systems.
• Finally, I want to spend more time on new pieces for Generative.fm. Before I started making generative music, I wrote, recorded, and mixed my own songs. I used to spend dozens of hours each on 3 minute tracks, which is significantly more time than I spend on one of these infinitely-long generative pieces. I need more time to record custom parts and build more complex systems, and I also want to spend more time mixing and mastering.

I hope that the quality of new pieces I make going forward will make up for the decrease in frequency. I'm really sorry if this is a bummer for you -- feel free to let me know what you think. And thank you so much for being a part of Generative.fm!