Bumble and Spotify make music a vital part of online dating

Steven Loeb · June 15, 2016 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/4615

The two companies have partnered to let people see what their prospective mates are listening to

Updated with comment from Bumble

There are a few things you probably want to get out of the way when you first meet a potential life partner. That includes, what are their politics? I'm not saying that two people need to be perfectly in sync on every issue, but you want to make sure you aren't walking into someone's apartment, only to find a life-sized Donald Trump statue standing in their living room. That's what they call a deal breaker.

Another important thing to find out: what kind of music they're into. Remember, if all goes well you will be going on many roadtrips with this person. You don't want to find out when it's too late that they used to be a Kenny G groupie, because that's going to make for some very, very, very, very, very long car rides. And probably a lot of argument as well. 

That second problem might not come up as much anymore thanks to Spotify and Bumble, who have announced an integration that will allow users to connect their Spotify account to their Bumble profile, so that users can see what their prospective mates have been listening to.

All users have to do is open up their profile settings within Bumble and connect to Spotify. When they see an artist that someone else is listening to, they can click on that artist to see their page on Spotify to learn more about them.

Bumble is the dating-app started by Tinder co-founder and former VP of marketing  Whitney Wolfe, who, you may remember, accused company's chief marketing officer, Justin Mateen, of sexual harassment. The two sides eventually settled

After that all went down, Wolfe founded Bumble in late 2014 as a way to give women more power in the online dating world. On Bumble the woman always makes the first move, and if she doesn't say something to a new connection within 24 hours, that connection disappears forever. Men can’t start a conversation with the female users but they can show special interest in a match by extending just one per day to remain in queue for an additional 24 hours.

"Music has brought people together for generations and can often indicate how well you’ll get along with a potential mate. As such, we’re hooking up with our perfect match, Bumble, the app changing the rules of the game by putting women in charge, to help people make more meaningful connections with music taste in mind," Spotify wrote in the announcement. 

A partnership like this really does show you how much dating has changed. I became an adult in the age of Facebook, so it was already common to me to know at least something about the person I was going on a date with, but this opens things up in a whole new way.

Think about all the different potential partnerships sites like Bumble could enter into. They could integrate your Netflix account, so your date can see what you've been watching ("He hasn't even started Orange Is the New Black and I already watched season 3? How would this relationship even work? Pass.") Or your Goodreads so they know what books you've pretended to read. The possibilities are endless, and maybe that's not actually something to be happy about.

What I mean by that is, there can be such a thing as too much information. For example, I've been with my better half for more than 10 years now, but I can't say we would have made it this far if she had known about my love of the Thong Song right away. 

Maybe some things are better left to be discovered later on.

"Our integration with Spotify is just the beginning of many branded partnerships we plan to rollout. For us, it’s all about giving our users fun and meaningful ways to connect, and there’s no better way than through shared interests," a spokesperson from Bumble told VatorNews.

"We saw that with our launch of the election filters earlier in the year and we’re seeing it now with the Spotify integration. The categories of interest points is almost endless. Food, fashion, movies, cars, travel, etc., etc. It’s going to be very exciting for us as brand to give our users more and more engaging ways to connect."

(Image source: i.scdn.co)

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