Spotify and Tinder are giving the modern mating dance a soundtrack. Starting today, users of the popular dating app can spotlight one song—their “Tinder Anthem”—to make playable on their profile via the popular music-streaming app, and they can also get a glimpse of how their listening habits match up with potential new suitors’ listening habits, so long as both parties have Spotify.
Presumably this initiative is meant to give people more things to discover they have in common—Slayer fans can meet Slayer fans. Or to give people new ways to signal important things about their personality or identity—Zayniacs can tell their dates about their crush. Or, most temptingly, to allow folks to better signal exactly why they’re on Tinder: You can pick a song depending on whether you’re looking for an eternal flame, to hold someone’s hand, or simply to do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.
But in addition to whatever the Spotify/Tinder partnership may eventually reveal about love songs’ relationship to real-life love, it also offers a reminder that the most important and under-recognized factors in music’s ongoing “Streaming Wars” may simply be personal networks, critical mass, and interface.