Bumble, the fast growing female-led dating app, is partnering with Spotify.
Bumble users will soon have the option of connecting their dating profile to their Spotify account so it can include the top artists they listen to the most. Users can then tap on an artist featured in someone’s profile and it will take them to the artist’s page in the Spotify app.
While some may think music preferences aren’t a big deal, Bumble is betting that they can be significant enough to influence whether or not you decide to swipe left or right on someone. “Music says a lot about who we are as people and connecting culturally can serve a foundation for creating meaningful relationships” explained Whitney Wolfe, CEO and founder of the company.
While users could have previously just typed their favorite music in their profile, Bumble acknowledged that many users may not choose to take the time to do that, and it would be helpful to provide a direct link to Spotify in case a user wants to listen to a potential match’s music choices.
For now, the top artists are automatically chosen from someone’s listening activity on Spotify, but the company will soon launch an update that lets users hide certain artists. This could be helpful if the embarrassing music you listen to in private doesn’t exactly jibe with the persona on your public profile.
Bumble says the partnership came together organically, and the feature was a product of informal conversations about a year ago between a few Bumble employees and their friends that work at Spotify.
But if the feature actually begins to have an impact on a user’s swiping tendencies, it could lead to other integrations down the road that help potential daters get to know each other even better.
Imagine linking your OpenTable profile to show your most frequented restaurants, or your Gilt account to show your favorite brands. In a world of app-based dating where you have limited (and not always accurate) details to help with your swiping decision, these integrations could be a way to add verified info to the decision-making process.
Not that Bumble’s users need any more incentives to use the platform. Eighteen months after the app launched, the company said today that the average users spends 100 minutes per day using the app, and they now have 5.5 million users (with 1.1 million using the app daily).
