what is basslinedotcom?
in the summer of 2025, i started a custom mixtape service in my home city of atlanta. the idea was to build community around music IRL while encouraging the use of analog technology in place of music streaming platforms.i designed and posted flyers around the city with a qr code that led to a survey, which asked questions like, “if you could be any animal, real or mythical, what animal would you be?” and “share a recent treasured memory of yours.” based only on the information from people’s responses, i’d burn them a custom 20-30 minute-long CD mixtape and mail it to their address.
my hope for the project was to give strangers in my community a personalized and ultimately human way to discover new music, in exchange for sharing some aspects of their own lives, beliefs, thoughts, and values. at the same time, i left traces of my own identity in the songs i chose for each person. while in many ways the service paralleled modern streaming platform algorithms (faceless, individualized, spontaneous, data-driven), it stood in direct contradiction to these algorithms in many others (deliberate, emotional, human, intimate).
attached below are some of the CDs i burned, along with each person’s response to a specific question.
q: where do you best find yourself?
a: mind body world machine
q: if you could be any animal, real or mythical, what would you be?
a: flying tiger
q: share a recent treasured memory of yours
a: getting married in may
q: finish the phrase: smoking...
a: gun hot whiskey jacket
q: which best describes you?
a: sunlight seawater smoke sand
q: imagine that you wake up to find that you are the last person
on earth. what is the first thing you mourn?
a: my sisters
basslinedotcom is currently on hiatus, but i never stopped burning CDs. if you’d like one, fill out the survey here.