Review my startup: Tastebuds - dating for last.fm users

http://tastebuds.fm

by juliankeenaghan • 16 years ago

133 64 16 years ago

tastebuds.fm

I recently launched a unique new dating website that matches people based on their tastes in music.

mustafakidd• 16 years ago

Cool idea and I like the design a lot. Just curious, do you have a plan to monetize this as a business?

juliankeenaghan11• 16 years ago

Absolutely. We have a few ideas we're looking into at the minute though we're concentrating on getting it off the ground and growing the user base first, as is a necessity with this type of site.

danielamitay• 16 years ago

Good idea. Amazing name. Beautiful website. Good price (free).

I'd be interested in how effective the matches are from a non-musical perspective (are they successful long term).

I can't imagine this not succeeding if you add features and additional accessibility.

ALSO: Submit it to Last.Fm's API build library: http://build.last.fm/

G_Wen• 16 years ago

Wow, that name alone is amazing. Simple, easy to remember and clever. Combined with the simple design, and novelty you're off to a great start! This will be really interesting to follow.

ivankirigin• 16 years ago

You should ask for auth for photos right on connect, avoiding the image upload step. Just use their current profile photo and make it easy to change.

juliankeenaghan11• 16 years ago

Good idea. We used to automatically use the last.fm image (if they registered that way) but found most of them weren't really photos of the users themselves. We're looking at more of a complete post-sign-up wizard now where we could give the option of using your facebook profile photo straight away.

rnernento4• 16 years ago

First Impressions:

The name is really really good.

The design is top-notch, one of the best looking sites, let alone startups I've seen in a while. One thing, to me the male/female symbols were not intuitive. I see that they're labeled and they do look cool but I feel they take a way from an almost perfect interface.

Unfortunately once I fill out the basic info I'm having trouble getting it to load. The page comes up but then immediately goes blank. Chrome in Windows XP...

I'll keep checking it, you made it on to my favorites list.

juliankeenaghan11• 16 years ago

Can you explain where exactly it's going blank? Is it after you update your profile or on the search page?

I agree we could perhaps improve on those gender icons.

rnernento4• 16 years ago

The search results after I fill out the "click here to begin" stuff and click go.

luu• 16 years ago

Since you're actually reading this, just FYI, if I enter a one character username, I et an error saying usernames must be at least 2 characters long, but if I enter a 2 character username, I get an error saying usernames can only contain regular characters plus _, and can't start with with a _. Three character usernames seem fine, though.

yummyfajitas• 16 years ago

It takes about 2 minutes worth of queries to discover there are no girls on this site.

There are 3 girls there who match ["Rammstein", "Johnny Cash", "Radiohead"] as well as ["Lady Gaga", "Britney Spears", "Justin Bieber"]. If I type in my zip code, all 9 girls are identical.

Nice concept, however.

aeontech• 16 years ago

I see 61 pages of results * 9 results per page with my last.fm profile.

alexyim• 16 years ago

Have you actually looked at the other pages?

blhack• 16 years ago

You're right, it is a nice concept. You're wrong, however, that there are "no girls on the site". I have gotten 9 results (at least) that appear to be completely different than yours.

joshbert• 16 years ago

This is incredible. I put my username in and was immediately prompted with nearly 10 females from around.

I may be getting ahead of myself here, but if I marry one of these girls, I shall invite you to our wedding which will have both our last.fm personal radio stations as music.

retroafroman2• 16 years ago

"I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like... Books, records, films - these things matter."

--Rob (John Cusack) in High Fidelity

rbxbx2• 16 years ago

I immediately thought of this as well upon seeing the site.

However didn't he come to the realization later in the book that perhaps those things aren't so important?

(I hope to come to that realization some day as well, soldiering on until then.)

retroafroman2• 16 years ago

I honestly can't remember, I've only seen the movie once, like 6 years ago, when a girl I was dating showed it to me primarily because she liked this quote. Other than this, I don't recall much of the movie.

econodog• 16 years ago

Was this from Music Hack Day 09 Julian

juliankeenaghan11• 16 years ago

Nope, haven't made it to a Music Hack Day yet unfortunately. Was there a similar idea there?

CGamesPlay• 16 years ago

I'm very impressed by the implementation you've got here. Great work, very nice design and very frictionless sign up.

dfreidin• 16 years ago

Great concept, and so far it looks like the execution is really good as well. However, I agree with rnernento about the gender icons. I see how they're based on the standard male and female symbols, but it's still a bit confusing, and not even slightly intuitive to someone who's never seen them before. I'm not sure what a better clever idea would be, but perhaps it would be best to switch to a basic M and F until another idea presents itself. Confusing symbols could potentially drive people away for no good reason.

dheerosaur• 16 years ago

Will small face icons or smilies be good alternatives for M and F?

kmfrk• 16 years ago

"Sorry, we couldn't find you any matches in <your_country> using those artists."

My inner socialite is upset, but the hipster part of me is pleased. :)

As has already been mentioned, amazing name and a-mazing design.

I look forward to checking into the site when the user base is bigger, so I'll find me some like-minded hipsters.

jaykz52• 16 years ago

Sadly, I feel the same :). The catch-22 is that if the site is able to grab a user base, we'll be in a far larger company. I feel so torn...

acgourley• 16 years ago

Can I ask who did your design?

juliankeenaghan11• 16 years ago

Our drummer (both founders play in a band together) did most of the initial work: http://milomarsei.com/. My friend Tim did the logo - timkeeling.com. And we've added to it as we went along, though we're both developers mostly.

Subskii• 16 years ago

Might want to check that the server hosting the content for http://milomarsei.com/ isn't compromised.

AVG popped up an Threat Blocked: Exploit. Felt you should know.

_harry• 16 years ago

Awesome name. Great look.

The only thing that caught my eye was a vertical scrollbar that only scrolls about 20 pixels worth shows up on the homepage on a 13-inch macbook running chrome.

mcritz• 16 years ago

Amazing idea well executed! Congratulations! My only observation is that the age sliders do not respond to the iPad touch screen. A very minor complaint, but I hope you put it on the task list.

moge• 16 years ago

Just amazing user flow. I immediately sent this to my designer and said 'THIS is what we need to do'. Really great instant gratification and user acquisition flow. Agree with other comments about the gender icons. I had to pause for a second and think about which I was :)

Very well done. I will you tons of success!

msutherl• 16 years ago

This is really slick! The low barrier of entry is totally key. I love the design and I think the concept will work well. Sadly, only 2 girls turned up, so I sent the more attractive one a parodic message. Maybe I'll make a friend.

kilian• 16 years ago

Hey Julian, when are you gonna e-mail me back? ;)

Anyway, tastebuds is great. Though there are no matches in my country yet, a cute girl from some other country did favorite me. What I miss is search in all matches regardless of country.

juliankeenaghan11• 16 years ago

Hi Killian, we haven't forgotten about you!

You can search regardless of country by choosing 'Worldwide' on search results page.

By the way I liked your new guitar tab app.

jollyjerry• 16 years ago

offtopic, but guitaryst looks pretty sweet. You guys should compile a list of other cool apps built on top of last.fm

great job on the UX for tastebuds. It's not only pretty, but the barrier to entry was low and really draws you in to try it. The artist autocomplete was a perfect example of this.

Bootvis• 16 years ago

Strange, I get 3 profiles in the Netherlands that all registered a few days ago. Maybe there is a bug there?

EDIT: I guess our musical tastes differ by too much. Maybe it's better to show bad matches then no matches at all?

orlandop• 16 years ago

A quick search of the United States with the artist filter off, shows 116 pages with 9 pictures each, so it seems to have about 1044 females. Not bad for starting out, if it catches on it can be a good business.Congrats! Great idea and amazing design.

OmniBus• 16 years ago

It is so slow accessing from Hong Kong.

reid• 16 years ago

Thank you for not putting a useless subject line when messaging a user.

I love the setup flow. I really appreciate the time taken to request for more Facebook permissions as you need them. Facebook photo import just works.

Consider having your initial pre-signup matches to be somewhat closer to the user based on their location. (IP address, Geolocation API upsell while showing initial matches, etc.) I saw lots of folks in New York show up initially but after putting in my ZIP code there were plenty of local matches.

EDIT: The empty inbox picture made me laugh! Nice one.

juliankeenaghan11• 16 years ago

That's a fair point about the initial search using the location. We launched showing country matches initially to give you more chance of results with a low user base but ideally you would use the location.

Glad you liked the empty inbox reference!

dannytatom• 16 years ago

I hate to be that guy, but I had this exact idea laying in bed last night. Awesome to see someone do it with such style.

anthonycerra• 16 years ago

Awesome innovation! In addition to subscription fees, you can make affiliate cash by setting up first dates at concerts that they'd both enjoy.

crasshopper• 16 years ago

You could also make a LinkedIn app that lets people hire based on applicants' musical taste.

Maybe you will say that's crass, unprofessional, or inaccurate -- but I think musical taste is a better metric than many we use today in hiring. And it could just be treated as a "fun sort" instead of randomizing whom you talk to first.

danielhfrank• 16 years ago

Amazing. I might dump my girlfriend just so I can use this

zavulon• 16 years ago

This is great.. the only thing I don't like is how you have to register to view someone's profile. Seems like you should need to register to message them.. how am I supposed to be interested enough to sign up without seeing any profiles?

ThomPete• 16 years ago

I guess that since you can see pictures you will know whether you are interested or not enough to sign up for the rest.

skylabmelody• 16 years ago

Great Work. Small popups spawned over the "next page" button are really annoying.

kjell• 16 years ago

I wrote this down in my idea book a month ago, but I figured eventually someone else would do it. And this is sweet.

One feature request: could you somehow weigh the different artists in my history according to what I've been listening to lately? I've got 7 years of audioscrobbler history, and my musical tastes have been everywhere in that time. Today they're pretty far out there as far as people my age go. The matches it shows me line up much better with a five-years-younger me. I'm sure you've already thought of this and lots of data needs to be there before the matching can get complex. Just wanted to throw in my pennies.

Mz2• 16 years ago

I'm generally against dating sites for the same reason I am against dating (short version: I think it's a broken paradigm). But I'm impressed with this idea. Kudos for finding some connection to start out with other than "we both are hoping to get hooked up". I hope you do very well.

mahmud• 16 years ago

I'm generally against dating sites for the same reason I am against dating

You're against dating? Two consenting adults courting each other to better know each other .. seems like a very sensible thing to me. Without dating what do we have left? arranged marriage and kidnapping?

Mz2• 16 years ago

Some of the articles posted here from OK Cupid indicate that an awful lot of deception goes on there. Average reported heights are two inches taller than reality. Average reported income is higher than real averages. The most attractive photos are older on average than other photos on the site and were typically older at the time they went up. Most people who list themselves as "bisexual" don't actually chat up members of both sexes. Genuine, intimate relationships require a certain degree of honesty that dating seems to actively discourage.

I read once that people are generally more honest online than in person. I don't know if that applies to dating sites or not but I've heard plenty of stories that indicate people are not terribly honest when going the normal dating route either. People who get to know each other socially (through work, hobbies, etc) before getting romantically involved seem to typically have better relationships. Hopefully this site will offer something in common to base a personal connection on and give people a good place for starting a meaningful conversation. The fact that both parties are looking for someone else is usually not much of a conversation starter.

EDIT: All of which is beside the point. My only point was that I am not a fan of dating sites and even I think this is a good idea. I added a little bit of why I think it's a good idea in hopes that it is useful information for the site owners. I don't see why that merits a downvote or reactionary comment.

ezl• 16 years ago

the girls who share tastes with me on tastebuds.fm are way hotter than the girls i'm meeting in real life.

clearly i'm doing this wrong.

clofresh• 16 years ago

After registering through my facebook account and picking my photos, I kind of got lost. Instead of leaving the user off at the photo edit page (http://tastebuds.fm/users/current/edit#load_images) maybe direct them to artists or profile tab>

p_nathan• 16 years ago

Tastebuds totally does not connote music dating to me, it connotes a foodie site. I really had a moment of mental dissonance there.

It's a nice short name, easy to remember and spell, but I'm not feeling the connotations.

/my 0.02 cents.

davidchua• 16 years ago

Just an idea, why not integrate with 8tracks.com. I think it would be cool to see what mixes others listen to.

danw• 16 years ago

Is this based on a music hackday project?

juliankeenaghan11• 16 years ago

No, just a personal project. We were hoping to work on it at music hackday but couldn't make the last one in London.

Review my startup: Tastebuds - dating for last.fm users

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