Tastebuds.fm, the app that matches people based on their musical tastes, has found a match of its own. The London-based startup is acquiring U.S. competitor moosify, a mobile-first “social dating” app that also connects people around music. Terms of the deal remain undisclosed.
Tastebuds co-founder Alex Parish tells me the acquisition will consist of moosify’s brand, technology and userbase, with the plan being to transition moosify users across to the Tastebuds platform “in the coming days”. Meanwhile, my understanding is that moosify’s founders are moving on to pastures new.
“We’ve been in contact with the guys at moosify for a while as we’ve always been a fan of what they’ve been building and their mobile-first approach,” says Parish. “We were looking for opportunities to do something together and we felt like the time was right to join forces and create the largest music dating network, so we can match more people more effectively.”
Graduating from accelerator Springboard (now Techstars London), Tastebuds launched back in 2011 as a dating site focused on music as a way of matching prospective dates, gaining a reputation for its ability to reach users who wouldn’t normally consider doing the online dating thing.
Since then, however, it’s repositioned ever so slightly, going beyond online dating and can now be thought of as a competitor to other friend matching services like Badoo, in addition to the usual online dating suspects. More recently the startup (finally) launched a well-received app for iOS, adding to its existing web and Spotify apps.
In contrast, Palo Alto-based moosify — backed by various angels, including Talenthouse CEO Roman Scharf, along with ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, the leading German TV network — launched a year later than Tastebuds with a mobile-first approach that saw it support iOS and Android, sans web app.
It scans your phone’s music library as the basis for building a music-focused profile and lets you ping other users with similar musical tastes. In addition, like Tastebuds, moosify also supports Spotify with an app for the music streaming service.
When asked what today’s acquisition gives Tastebuds that it didn’t already have, Parish cites moosify’s “more than 100,000 users across the globe”, many of which he says are based in areas where Tastebuds hasn’t traditionally had a large userbase, such as mainland Europe and in particular Germany (presumably via ProSiebenSat.1 Media’s backing).
He also tells me Tastebuds itself is now profitable through subscriptions of its premium offering, Backstage Pass, which enables unlimited private messaging and other premium features, such as the removal of ads.