A Music Lover's First Attempt at Online Dating

By Sydney Gore

Online dating is all the rage these days, but it still kind of freaks me out. There’s something weird about knowing that one day when I have kids, I will tell them about what it was like to try to meet someone IRL, without some niche online dating site. They are going to be stunned. I can imagine the look of horror on their faces followed by, “You mean you used to pick up guys at... bars? You didn’t scan their social media accounts prior to interaction? How did you know that they weren’t psychos? OMG MOM.”

Websites and apps like OkCupid, eHarmony, match.com, Tinder, and Hinge all provide ample opportunity for those seeking love online. But for music lovers, finding a match isn't easy. For me, music compatibility is an important element in any relationship—if the vibe is wrong, it’s not meant to be. I’m not saying that my future bae needs to listen to the same music as I do all the time, but if he can’t get down with Drake, he can’t get down with me.

Happenstance brought me to Tastebuds.fm, an online dating website created for music lovers. The game is simple: the app links to your Facebook profile and then matches you with other users based on your favorite music.

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By Sydney Gore

Online dating is all the rage these days, but it still kind of freaks me out. There’s something weird about knowing that one day when I have kids, I will tell them about what it was like to try to meet someone IRL, without some niche online dating site. They are going to be stunned. I can imagine the look of horror on their faces followed by, “You mean you used to pick up guys at... bars? You didn’t scan their social media accounts prior to interaction? How did you know that they weren’t psychos? OMG MOM.”

Websites and apps like OkCupid, eHarmony, match.com, Tinder, and Hinge all provide ample opportunity for those seeking love online. But for music lovers, finding a match isn't easy. For me, music compatibility is an important element in any relationship—if the vibe is wrong, it’s not meant to be. I’m not saying that my future bae needs to listen to the same music as I do all the time, but if he can’t get down with Drake, he can’t get down with me.

Happenstance brought me to Tastebuds.fm, an online dating website created for music lovers. The game is simple: the app links to your Facebook profile and then matches you with other users based on your favorite music.

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When Tastebuds.fm was introduced in late 2010, it seemed promising, but seeing as to how I had never heard of it prior to this experiment, I wouldn’t say that it’s blown up as much as everyone had hoped. I decided to sign up. I mean, the only thing I had to lose from this was time. These are the results of my internet investigation, and my first experience using a match-making dating app.

3.Say my name, say my name.

 

Everyone has a name, but what’s their story? I wanted to pick something clever but also representative of who I am and the music that I'm into. For me, champagnepapipacifyme just made sense, and it seemed fitting for this occasion. Drake and FKA twigs are a delectable combination.

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5.#nonewfriends.

 

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I wasn’t 100% serious about dating on this site, but the last thing I needed was another “friend” on the internet. As the boy Drake once said, “Fuck a fake friend, where your real friends at?” Certainly not on Tastebuds.fm.

7.Building a profile

 

I didn’t want to reveal too much information about myself so I stuck with the basics. I posted my concert schedule would be good so I could possibly meet up with some of my prospects.

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I figured that the more artists I listed on my profile, the higher my chances were of receiving a good pool of matches. Besides, who doesn’t like having options?

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In answering my profile questions, I wanted to be informative and show my personality a little bit. I don’t want to hide that I still jam out to Hilary Duff and Dashboard Confessional, but that shouldn’t overshadow the fact that I’m up to date on undiscovered talent and the new buzz. I knew I'd be judged, but the right person will accept me and all my guilty pleasures. At the end of the day, that’s what really matters.

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Upon receiving my first message (above), I quickly spotted an opportunity to shift the conversation to Lil B.

If he actually knew who Lil B was, I might have considered chatting with him for a bit. As you can see from the image on the left, I received a lot of messages from other users. They all ended up in the reject pile. (*Kanye voice* “How could you be so heartless?”)

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I wound up talking to a few guys with interesting backgrounds. My first target was Alan, a 25-year-old from Brooklyn. He never responded to me, but I didn’t care because after him I found 22-year-old Julien, a Parisian who relocated to Brooklyn. At one point in time, Julien was in a hardcore band, but he was a total babe so that didn’t scare me off. We talked back and forth for a bit, but things trailed off. After him, I moved on to some 23-year-old also living in Brooklyn.

In all of these interactions, I made the first move, so even though none of them worked out, I was proud of myself. Why wait around when you know someone is lurking on your profile? And yes, Tastebuds.fm allows you to see who's looking at your profile.

You can also use the service on your phone by downloading the free app—super easy, and harmless, right?

Once I downloaded the app on my iPhone, I knew that I was in trouble. Now I completely understood why my friends constantly swiping on Tinder couldn’t help themselves. It's addictive. I spent most of my train ride sifting through all of my music matches with the hopes that I would find someone cute. For some reason, I kept getting matched with people from Great Britain and it was heartbreaking. Eventually, I was able to find some New Yorkers. Then I went back to school in DC so I changed my area to the DMV. Unfortunately, my suitors were less than satisfactory.

[caption id="attachment_443468" align="aligncenter" width="400"] I got my eyes on you...[/caption]

Warning: You get notifications whenever someone views your profile. On my first day, about 20 guys looked at my page. Normally, this would make me feel paranoid because the last thing I want to do is bring attention to myself while I’m creeping, but on a dating site, everybody’s doing it so you might as well be upfront about it.

15.Do you know the wifi password? ‘Cause I’d like to get connected to you.

 

Some pro-tips:

Spotify: Sync your Spotify and you'll receive much more accurate matches.

Soapbox: So this part of the site is essentially Tastebud’s chat room. There are a bunch of different sections and users can enter conversations about a variety of topics.

Get Lucky: You’re basically rolling the dice and seeing who is randomly generated for you. This is probably the least interesting feature on the site.

Gig Roulette: At first, I thought it was odd that people would be more comfortable going to a concert with a complete stranger than going alone, but I guess that it would be a cool first date. You already get the awkwardness out of the way because you both know that you’re mainly there to support the artist, so that’s tight. I decided to test my luck in D.C.

16.#goals

 

To be honest, I didn’t know what I wanted to get out of this. The hopeless romantic in me wanted to believe that I might have one of those Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist moments and find my musical soulmate in the form of Michael Cera, but I highly doubted that I would make that sort of miraculous connection. I didn’t have high expectations.

On my last official day using the app (a month after I started), I randomly decided to spark a conversation with a guy that had recently viewed my profile. His name was Jordan, and he lived in NYC by way of Manchester. He was 23 years old, only two years ahead of me. Of course, we had similar artists in common, but it was the mention of Wes Anderson in his other interests section that caught my eye. I decided to message him and asked what his favorite Wes Anderson movie was. He responded with The Royal Tenenbaums, which is my favorite as well. I wouldn’t say that we totally hit it off that night, but we talked about movies for about 45 minutes into the next day. The funny part? We never discussed music. Well, not until my last week using the app.

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From the beginning, the goal was to stop using the app after a month. He kept me active on there for an extra 20 days.

Once I had someone legitimately interested in me as much as I was in them, I wanted to see where it went. Soon enough, we began talking more frequently and what turned into messaging back and forth once a week became every single day. We went from talking late at night to randomly during the day on common things like the weather and the literature we were currently reading. Like me, he also preferred colder weather and layering his clothes. (And being from Manchester, he says “jumper,” which totally had me smitten.) He commuted to NYC from New Jersey so he understood my struggles on the NJ Transit. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but it was going rather well.

This was the first person that I felt comfortable revealing my identity to. He told me his name, so being the creep that I am, I looked him up on Instagram and Facebook right away. He’s the kind of guy that takes photos of paintings in museums, but also owns a Wu-Tang sweater. I showed my friends his accounts and screenshots of our conversations—they approved.

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Late on Sept. 20, I saw How To Dress Well perform live at U Street Music Hall in D.C. I told him about how weird the crowd was and it turned out that he had also gone to HTDW’s show in New York. We started comparing performances and critiquing HTDW’s albums. It was a *~*~*crazy*~*~* coincidence, but then I remembered that we had been matched partly because of this so it wasn’t that shocking. I mentioned that I was on my way to NYC, not to put pressure on him to try to meet me, but to see what his response would be...

19.TTYN

 

“No, I don’t even know what’s best for me…”

Tbh, I wasn’t surprised when he suddenly stopped talking to me. So much for getting that IRL meet-up! He seemed like such a cool dude so I was kind of disappointed. Trust nobody, though. Back to rule No. 1: NO NEW FRIENDS.

To make a long story short, music brings people together. However, music should not be the deciding factor in picking a potential mate. In the end, I wound up bonding with someone over movies, even though we were on a music-centric dating site. Tastebuds.fm opened my mind about online dating, but I learned that limiting your options based on music preferences isn't the best way to go looking for a partner.

Aside from giving online dating a try, this was a great platform for me to try something else out of my element too: NOT TALKING ABOUT MUSIC. Since my musical preferences were already on the table, I felt more inclined to take the conversation elsewhere. All in all, it was a good experience, even if it didn't work out the way I had hoped.

Maybe I’ll meet my musical soulmate somewhere else.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: STILL SINGLE, LOOKING FOR A CHAMPAGNE PAPI

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