Music, at the speed of a conversation.

Somebody sends you one song and says why it made them think of you. You add the one it reminded you of, and say why. Then you hand it on.

Twelve people do that, one after another, and what comes out is a playlist nobody could have made alone: 12 songs, each one an answer to the last, with the reasons still attached.

Why it is slow

Everywhere else, sharing music costs nothing and therefore means nothing. A link in a group chat, a playlist nobody opens, a recommendation from a machine that has never heard a song in its life.

Here it costs something. You get three a week. You have to say why. You have to pick one person. And you have to wait, because the thing you are part of only finishes when eleven other people have taken their turn.

You do not see the whole thing while it is being made. You see the song before yours and nothing further back, so you answer the music rather than the person, and you find out whose taste you have been following only at the end.

How it works

A song is handed over, never posted: One person, chosen on purpose, with a line about why. Nothing here is broadcast and nobody has followers.
You get three passes a week: Each comes back seven days after you spend it. You cannot earn more, and there is no Monday when they all return. Spending one on somebody is the whole point.
The note is required: If you cannot say why, it is not ready to send. That sentence is the thing people keep, and at the end it is what the whole playlist is made of.

In The Liners is invitation only, and the only way to get one is for somebody to spend a pass on you. There is no list to join. That is not scarcity for its own sake: it is the same rule as everything else here, which is that somebody has to think of you specifically.

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