Chris Onstad writes the online comic Achewood. In his explanation of the strip's current hiatus after a nine-year run, this:
One thing that’s always made me a bit sad is how Internet presentation seems to devalue content. So much art, writing, and news is suddenly available to us that each piece seems nearly a throwaway, lost in the gullet of our now-insatiable appetite for information. Here in the future, everyone is famous for 15kb. Fifteen reTweets. Fifteen LOLs. Should I work fifteen hours on something that will take fifteen seconds to read? The answer is yes, of course, because I love what I do, but after nearly a decade one wonders if one couldn’t do more for people with that time.
As an "internet musician" aka Guy Who Writes Songs And Puts Them On The Web, I have a sense of kinship1 with online comic makers2. So this paragraph really resonates with me. Should I, too, work for weeks (or more likely months) conceiving and recording a song that will be pushed out into the ether, consumed in minutes and ultimately fall into the abyss of someone's iTunes library? Absolutely. If I stopped, I'm pretty sure my brain would eventually try to gnaw its way to freedom through my obstinate, practical, boring skull.
1 See also. 2 My new favorite? Three Word Phrase.