Finding somebody that’s compatible for a romantic relationship — or even just for friendship — requires having something in common. With the dating and social network app known as Tastebuds, people are brought together by a shared taste in music. The concept sounds very promising. After all, what better reflection of one’s personality than one’s taste in music. Of course, with dating sites, the concept is one thing, performance is another. We registered on Tastebuds and put it to the test. Can you really meet compatible partners based solely on musical tastes? Does Tastebuds have the ability to capture the prolonged attention of users, or is it just a novelty? Read our Tastebuds review and find out.

— Pros and Cons —

Pros

• Initial registration is free
• Available on desktop and mobile
• Expedited registration by linking your Facebook account
• Large selection of music services that you can link to

Cons

• Android app not available
• Paid membership required to respond to messages
• Majority of user base uninterested in dating

— In-Depth TasteBuds Dating App Review —

Every day you insert a soundtrack to your life. This can come from the radio or it could come from the music collection on your smartphone. The point is that as you go about your day, the music that you select reflects your mood. Over time, the music that you curate says a lot about you. The dating and social network app known as Tastebuds is betting that commonality in musical tastes will result in compatibility for relationships.

— The Rundown on Tastebuds —

Tastebuds.fm uses the phrase “connect through music” as one of its slogans. In theory, that is what drives the entire concept behind the site. Tastebuds is available as an iPhone app as well as a service that is accessible via desktop and mobile browsers.

Initial registration on Tastebuds.fm is free. By linking to your Facebook account and assorted social music platforms — such as Spotify, SoundCloud, and Last.fm — members are given a way to share their musical tastes with one another.

Through the use of communal chat boards members are provided with a way of intermingling and discovering others with similar tastes. Tastebuds also has a feature which they call “Concert Buddies.” This is hooked up with online event services, such as SongKick. This is aimed at bringing members together for real world meetups at concerts.

Similar to more traditional dating sites, when two members mutually like each other’s profiles, they are able to engage in private communication. All in all, Tastebuds, as conceptualized, sounds quite intriguing.

— The Reality of Tastebuds —

Unfortunately, once our testers registered and started using Tastebuds.fm, what they found was different than what the site conditions you for.

About the only area that our testers found to be as expected was the registration process. It is very straightforward.

If you link up your Facebook account to your new Tastebuds account, all of the essential information for your account is automatically migrated. This includes your first name, gender, location, and sexual orientation. If you choose not to link your Facebook account, you can register by using a valid email and selecting a Tastebuds password. This, however, requires you to manually enter all of the information which is normally imported directly from Facebook. Even so, if you are a privacy advocate this does not add much time to the registration process.

On both the desktop and iPhone app version, our testers voiced dissatisfaction with the overall aesthetic. It was very bland. Its use of gray seemed to dull the senses, especially if you remained on the site for anything longer than a few minutes.

Getting beyond the sterile look of the site, our testers voiced other concerns. Right after you register, Tastebuds creates a false sense of expectation. It is at that moment when new users are prompted to fill out a welcome questionnaire. This includes questions regarding your taste in music, as well as general interest questions designed to gauge your personality. Among the questions were “the song that would play at my funeral would be…” and “if I had $1 million for a day I would…” After filling out a dozen or so of those types of questions, our testers were left with the feeling that they would be useful in whatever algorithmic matchmaking system Tastebud uses.

Our testers direct experience on the site, however, proved this questionnaire to be of little value. Most of the member-to-member engagement on Tastebuds occurs via the community board and the “message bomb” feature. The former requires one member to send a direct message to another in hopes of receiving a reply. The latter involves one member selecting a question from a drop-down menu and sending them to various members at once — a shotgun approach if you will.

— Cost —

Basic membership on Tastebuds.fm is free. However, if you want to be able to initiate messages with other members, you must have a paid membership. Free members can only respond to messages received from paid members. This membership has a cost of $10 per month. Since there is no further value added to the paid membership besides the initiation of messaging, we feel that it underperforms.

— Quality of User Engagement —

As we have stated above, our testers were underwhelmed by the overall user experience on Tastebuds. Whenever they engaged in a message exchange with other members, the resulting conversation was short, truncated, and totally lacking in excitement. As a matter of fact, some of the people that our testers engaged with flat-out stated that they did not have any interest to ever meet anybody from this platform in person. They were using it merely out of curiosity, or because they were seeking conversations specifically about music.

While we understand that Tastebuds presents itself as a social network more than a dating site, it does suggest that it can be used for that latter purpose. Unfortunately, what our testers experience demonstrated was that it performs poorly for dating or any other type of matchmaking.