

Review my startup: Tastebuds - dating for last.fm users - juliankeenaghan
http://tastebuds.fm
I recently launched a unique new dating website that matches people based on their tastes in music.
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joshbert
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.

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rnernento
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.

~~~
juliankeenaghan
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.

~~~
luu
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.

~~~
juliankeenaghan
You can now have 2 character usernames. Thanks for the heads-up.

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danielamitay
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/>

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kmfrk
"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
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...

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

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retroafroman
"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

~~~
rbxbx
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.)

~~~
retroafroman
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.

~~~
rbxbx
Ah, I was referring to the book... maybe it wasn't in the movie

As an aside, if you enjoyed the movie and have not read the book, please do.
It's a very easy and thoroughly enjoyable read.

~~~
benkant
It's in both the book and the movie.

I watch the movie often.

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

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G_Wen
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.

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

~~~
juliankeenaghan
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.

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crasshopper
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.

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

~~~
alexyim
Have you actually looked at the other pages?

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kilian
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.

~~~
juliankeenaghan
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.

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

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kjell
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.

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reid
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.

~~~
juliankeenaghan
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!

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

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dannytatom
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.

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clofresh
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>

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moge
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!

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orlandop
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.

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p_nathan
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.

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msutherl
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.

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mcritz
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.

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_harry
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.

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ivankirigin
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.

~~~
juliankeenaghan
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.

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ezl
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.

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

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

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econodog
Was this from Music Hack Day 09 Julian

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

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

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danw
Is this based on a music hackday project?

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

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OmniBus
It is so slow accessing from Hong Kong.

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acgourley
Can I ask who did your design?

~~~
juliankeenaghan
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
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.

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Mz
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
_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?

~~~
Mz
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.

