Most dating apps ask you to compress yourself into a quippy bio and a handful of photos, which undoubtedly leads to endless swiping and trite "Hey, how are you?"s that go nowhere. Vinylly is a dating app that starts somewhere more revealing: What music you listen to, how you listen and why it matters to you.
CNET
Music has long functioned as social shorthand. It's moving and powerful and brings people together in deep, sometimes unexpected ways. A favorite artist can signal your values, emotions and even worldview. Vinylly treats those signals as data. In doing so, it positions itself as both a cultural experiment and a change from the traditional dating app playbook, being the only dating app that is 100% focused on music compatibility.
AI is seeping into nearly every corner of the world, including modern dating. And now, as dating apps eagerly adopt AI to automate small talk and create prompts for you, Vinylly is taking a lighter and more imaginative approach, debuting a feature called the Digital Cocktail Lounge, which uses AI to encourage actual human connection based on taste -- in music or in drinks. Yet all the while, it is still maintaining its focus on your preferred tunes to create a love match.
Don't miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.
Dating beyond the basic bios and prompts
Most mainstream dating apps, from Hinge to Tinder, rely on a familiar mix of photos, prompts and self-description. The result is fast judgment and often superficial engagement. Vinylly intentionally strips much of that away.
Rachel Van Nortwick, the app's founder, said Vinylly doesn't have bios. Instead, you sync your streaming data and answer questions about the role music plays in your life. The app combines quantitative listening data with qualitative intent, then weighs those inputs to produce matches.
What makes Vinylly distinct is not just that music is included, but that it structures the entire experience. Once an account is created and you sync your music streaming service, you'll be prompted to answer some questions about favorite genres, listening habits, concert anecdotes and other music-related questions. From there, Vinylly's algorithm analyzes your music data to find compatible matches, and these matches are ordered by what the app calls "volume," which is really just a measure of compatibility based on music taste. You can then browse through these matches' profiles, which all revolve around music taste, and listen to a potential match's recommended songs before deciding whether to connect.
"For a lot of people, music is their identity," Van Nortwick said. "Showing yourself through your music DNA leads to deeper, more emotional conversations faster."
... continue reading