Spotify Blend: A Litmus Test For Love?

I was chatting to a guy on hinge a few months ago when a strange trend began after the standard ‘new match’ greeting…

‘Hey’

‘Hey there’

‘What do you do for work?’

‘I’m actually a music radio producer’

‘That’s cool…Would you do a Spotify Blend with me?’

‘Spotify… what now?’

From this moment on, instead of: “what music are you into? Who’s your favourite artist? Or Dream festival line-up?” I regularly get asked…

“Want to blend with me?”

If you haven’t come across this Spotify feature, the principle is pretty simple. Your Spotify listens are mixed together with another person and you’re given a playlist of music you both like and a ‘taste match score’ out of 100. Picture those compatibility tests you’d do in your early teens; popping your surnames in the love-o-meter to see if you should get married in the playground. Only these ones look to see if a Black Sabbath fanatic would enjoy the same playlist as a Swiftie.

Over the past 6 months, I have built up quite a collection of Spotify Blends with various dating escapades. Frankly I’d told more men my listening habits than my surname. Some of these playlists were made before meeting each other, some after we had only just started chatting. Others were after one date and even with men I have flown across the sea to visit.

 

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None of these relationships lasted longer than a few months, but the blends live on. I now have a fantastic collection of tunes that highlight different aspects of my personality.

Whatever brought us together for those few moments, is now represented in song. It could be our love of political commentary like Bo Burnham or Seb Lowe, a driving tune from Bruce Springsteen that we bonded over on the way to Wetherspoons or a 60s Etta James kitchen slow dance tune that we both said would be perfect for our first dance.

What I’ve come to realise from the dozens of blends I have been a part of, is that Spotify paints your music taste with such a broad-brush stroke. I’d hope that a 50% match score would result in a playlist of 50% similar music, with maybe a few wild or spicy outliers. Instead, the blends seem to ignore shared genres and just compares song by song. The music chosen forms a venn diagram of every artist you’ve ever streamed, ignoring the quantity of listens or the genres they fall into.

If you once clicked on a link to a parody song about a duck, expect that to be in your blend. If your friend took your aux in the car 3 years ago and played you their brothers indie band’s awful new track, you better believe that will appear on one of your blends. Music is influenced by so many people, places, events and emotions, but why is my love life being ruined by my ‘3am crying in the kebab shop’ playlist? There is too much riding on this for Spotify to reduce it all to a simple game of snap!

Here are some of my most interesting blends and our shared artists.

• The IPA Drinker: 92% The Beatles / The Smiths / Olivia Dean / David Bowie
• The D&D player: 96% Lawrence / Fleetwood Mac / Fontaines DC / Paolo Nutini
• The Camping Fanatic: 84% Hozier / Green Day
• The Car Fanatic: 91% Sabrina Carpenter / Billy Joel / Jamiroquai
• The Hippy Artist: 95% Sammy Rae and Friends / Raye / Seb Lowe / Suki Waterhouse
• The Decent Dancer: 78% Kate Bush / The Stranglers
• The One With The Quiff: 95% Lola Young / CMAT / Wet Leg / Last Dinner Party

Across most of these playlists, well-known artists such as Adele, Bruno Mars and The Beatles featured repeatedly.

Interestingly, (and perhaps it was a sign) Sabrina Carpenter featured in nearly all of the blends.

Those who said they performed music professionally seemed to have lower scores, while those with less musical background had much better, nuanced playlists.

The clearest pattern however, was that the higher the score, the worse the love match.

How can someone who is said to have 96% similarity in music taste, can have such different tastes in all other aspects of life?

Take the D&D Player… 96% compatibility in music taste yet we had no other hobbies in common, came from different places, different careers, and totally different outlooks on life. We had nothing in common. Except, the soundtrack to our lives had only a 4% difference. The music we listen to when we’re sad, when ecstatic, when in love and when heartbroken is nearly completely the same. Yet there was not a hint of love…

On the other hand, can you really say you have similar tastes if you both listen to the biggest artists of the moment and have no other music in common? You both know Olivia Dean? He likes The Beatles? So does my grandma…

Does this mean that I am destined to only have a surface level relationship or one night of passion in the dark with just the hum of the disappointment as the shared soundtrack?

The Camping Fanatic and The Decent Dancer both had the lowest percentages and hardly any shared songs in our playlists. Trying to find any tunes in common was a difficult feat. The results were a list of recommendations back and forth between us. These men however, were by far my best relationships. We shared a genuine friendship, shared hobbies, mutual friends and lived experiences. Our connections were more nuanced, more caring and far more substantial. So why does our music tastes not match? I checked our zodiacs and even they said we were ‘destined to cross transient paths.’

So what’s up Spotify? Am I to believe that I have managed to find the only emotionally unavailable men that listen to Fleetwood Mac? Or are the commitment-phobes now listening to Kate Bush with their one night stands? Or is the real issue not Spotify’s algorithm but perhaps my continued willingness to date men whose favourite song is Mr Brightside?

Does this mean that a shared music taste does not make for a good relationship?

I fecking hope not.

 

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With dating apps constantly trying to reduce our relationships to data, stats and ‘optimisation’, perhaps music taste just simply can’t be reduced to numerical algorithms. But then, It doesn’t feel right placing it in the same category as love languages, personality tests or astrology. Maybe this is the hopeless romantic in me, but music may just be too emotional to be condensed into statistics.

I could end with some soppy statement like ‘it’s not about the similarities we share, but how we love the differences between us’ that create true love… but I’m too cynical for that. So instead I’ll just keep judging my future love interests on their ability to explain why they have never listened to Bob Dylan and why their favourite band is Coldplay.

What I will take away from my findings is that really smart, successful, gorgeous men can have really awful music taste. If I continue along this path, me and the love of my life may not be able to decide upon our wedding playlist, and my plan to call our children Benny and Jet may land on deaf ears, but we might be able to agree on a colour to paint the front door.

I’m not sure I’ll be relying on Spotify for love just yet. It may be able to tell me who I share my music taste with, but it is yet to tell me who will text me back.

Words by Hebe Lawson