TasteBuds is a dating site that was founded by two musicians – Alex Parish and Julian Keenaghan. The two met through music (playing in a band). It brought the realization that most of the time, we meet the most awesome new people through music – in bars, at shows, or just talking to others about favourite songs and artists.
Music is usually called upon in the best moments of our lives, and there is also no doubt that music gives a common ground. Thus, Alex and Julian, who met through music, decided to create a platform that brings together people who have the same interests in music.
Yes, TasteBuds is legit. It is not a scam dating website because there have never been complaints of stolen money or credit details about the site.
www.tastebuds.fm was launched in 2010 as that platform. The website is now owned and operated by Tastebuds Media Ltd. TasteBuds has gone international and now boasts over 500,000 members around the globe.
This is an in-depth TasteBuds review. If you want to know everything about the dating site then you have come to the right place.
It has been said that as words are the language of reason, music is the language of feeling and passion. Those two (feeling and passion) drive many relationships.
A lot of dating services are around that connect people for relationships. Why not connect people based on their interests in music? That is essentially what TasteBuds is. It advertises as a platform where people can meet other people through music.
The big question is whether TasteBuds is successful in actually connecting people. Does the music focus of TasteBuds actually work for people who want to use it to find love or more? Is TasteBuds any better than the other online dating services in the market? In the first place, is TasteBuds member profile real?
This review will examine TasteBuds in order to provide the information that will help you answer these questions and more.
Background – Overview
Almost all the dating sites in the market are for singles and serve to connect singles together for a relationship. That description is far from what TasteBuds serves or does. First, TasteBuds is not only for Singletons. Whereas, most of the other dating sites discourage third-party relationships and admit only singles (such as never married, divorced, separated, or widowed), TasteBuds admits persons with all relationship statuses from single, to married, and everything in between (such as, in a relationship).
That married persons and those already in a relationship can use TasteBuds to tell you that it is not exclusively a dating service. That takes us to the question of what persons can look to get on the site.
When registering, you’ll have to fill in your intention for wanting to use the site; you can pick one or all from a “Here for” list that includes: New friends, Don’t know yet, Dating, Concert buddies, and Music discovery. This shows that dating is just one of many foci of the site.
On the one side, there are reviews where the multiple-focus of TasteBuds has been heralded, with many reviewers stating that with the site also about socializing and discovering music, there is less pressure on users to date. However, on the other side, there are reviews where the multiple-focus has been slated, with many reviewers stating that with members on the site for different reasons, one could easily find that he/ she is not on the same page with a lot of matches.
That said; if you are very serious about dating, and you want a dating-focused service, TasteBuds may not be the best service to use. However, that does not mean that you cannot find love in TasteBuds; you sure can. You’ll only need to do more to filter out many persons who are not on the same page with you.
Lastly, you can use TasteBuds no matter your sexual orientation. Whether you are straight, gay, or bisexual, you can use TasteBuds for every one of its purposes from discovering new music to meeting new friends to finding a date, and more.
Who is it for – Overview
Like every single connecting service in the business, you’ll have to register and create an account to use Taste Buds. There is a registration box on the landing page of the Taste Buds website. You can quickly sign up using Facebook, or you can go the other route of filing the registration form.
However, it is easy-breezy. You’ll only have to nominate a username and password, state your email address, city, gender, and age, and then hit “see your music matches”. You’ll get a notification that a verification link has been sent to the email address you supplied. When registering (for the purpose of this review), we chose to ignore verifying our email address.
We really thought we’ll hit a wall that’ll force us to verify the email before proceeding. Surprisingly, we breezed through. That got us thinking about why email verification links are sent in the first place when someone registering can proceed fine without verifying his/ her email account.
After logging in, you’ll meet a 3-step profile creation process. The first step is where you are supposed to give your “details”. Really we got wondering why it’s termed “details” because the only information required to be submitted here is: your gender, your orientation, and what you are “here for”.
Hitting “next” takes you to the next step (photos), where you are to upload a photo. You may import the photo from your Facebook account or upload it from your device. The 3rd and final step is the “music” step where Taste Buds prompts you to tell them about your favourite artists.
Also, you can import music likes from your Facebook account, or you can simply type in your favourite artists. Hit next, and you’re taken to a page with the welcome: “Great to have you on board”; and below the welcome message is a “Get started” button. Hit “Get Started” and you’ll be off to the races. You can immediately view the profiles of other singles on the platform.
However, we saw that, at this stage, our test profile was only 60% complete. Interestingly, Taste Buds didn’t leave us in the dark about what we should do to have a 100% complete profile. We need to:
If you didn’t take it seriously that Taste Buds is all about connections based on music, you’ll find it so when you have to write the “About Me” section which adds 10% to your profile completion status. If you don’t know what to write, Taste Buds directs you with the questions like: “What are you passionate about? Do you play an instrument? What was the best show you’ve ever been to?” So it’s clear that Taste Buds does not design the “About Me” section to be about your gorgeous appearance, or your desirable qualities/ personality. Rather, it’s designed to highlight your music preferences.
You’ll notice that you can have a 100% complete profile without adding important user information such as age, body type, ethnicity, and more. There are no long forms to be filled out asking for user information either for registration or to complete a profile. You definitely cannot use other dating services in the market without supplying these details; but Taste Buds don’t think such user information is important, as it allows you to have a 100% complete profile without the detail.
However, you can still choose to supply such general user information. To do so, you’ll have to navigate to settings from your user account and click on the user sidebar. Information you can supply there includes nationality, ethnicity, religion, body type, height, and age, relationship status (single, married in a relationship). It’s also where you’ll state who you want to be connected with (men, women, everyone), and the age range of people you’re interested in.
You can choose to answer some other questions which will be published in your profile that is displayed on the site, and these answers can be viewed by other members of Taste Buds that view your profile. Some of these questions include: how you spend most of your days, a description of yourself in three, what you will do if you had a million-dollar for a day, and more.
Signing Up – Overview
The profiles in a dating service are what you’ll be looking at to make the snap decision whether to contact the profile owner. Thus, you’ll want a profile to provide you with quality insight about the individual.
The main selling point of Taste Buds is to “meet people through music”. And one of its objectives is for you as its users to meet new people who share your music interests. That said; by looking at a profile, you should be able to see the “music” in the profile owner.
In other words, every profile in Taste Buds should be able to easily reveal the music preferences of the profile owner. Another objective of Taste Buds is for you as its user to “discover new music based on your taste”. That said; you should be able to find the kind of music you like when looking at profile matches.
Profiles of Taste Buds does excellently well on both fronts. Profiles generally have the following parts:
Given all the information that Taste Buds’ profiles can show, it means that the profiles can give quality insight into the profile owner. Thus, the profile can definitely help you meet people who share your music interests, as well as to help you discover new music based on your taste. What is more; it can also tell you more than the music in the user. For example, the “facts about me” section will reveal some personal details.
Also, the Overview section can give quality insight into the user depending on the additional information that the user decides to include in his/ her profile. For example: “I spend most of my days…” can tell you about the user’s lifestyle; “me in three words” can tell you about the user’s personality; “if I had a million dollars for a day I would…” can tell you about the user’s values, etc.
However, the catchphrase is “what the user chooses to supply”. Taste Buds does not make all fields compulsory. As mentioned earlier, a profile can be 100% complete even without having general user information. Also, a user may choose not to answer any of these insightful sections of the “Overview”.
Thus, some profiles in Taste Buds can be threadbare. You’ll find some with the profile header, a list of some favourite songs and/ or artists, and nothing more. However, you’ll find some really detailed profiles that the profile users have put time into providing quality information.
Profile Quality – Overview
Taste Buds does not use some of the complex algorithm-based matching of some dating services in the business. However, Taste Buds furnishes its users with matches. If you log into your account, you can go to the “people” tab, and you’ll find that the dating service suggests people to you. It uses your location and gives you profiles of members near your location.
Interestingly, Taste Buds places this member into certain categories to help you know who you’ll be dealing with. Some of these categories include:
Giving you these profile suggestions in the different categories makes for a richer user experience. Apart from helping you know from the start who is most likely to help you achieve what you are looking to get from the platform, some of the categories can help as ice breakers to get a conversation started. Apart from the different categories, you’ll find in the “People” tab, you can also click on the “Get Lucky” tab to find a list of possible matches.
Also, you can go fishing yourself by searching the membership base for persons that you will like. You can use the search tool of Taste Buds to filter profiles using a good range of criteria. You can choose the gender of search enquiries (men, women, everyone).
You can also search for people using their distance from your location, and age range. More importantly, you can search for people who have the same intentions as yourself for using the platform. That is, if you’re using TasteBuds to find a relationship, you wouldn’t want to be shown profiles of people who are using it just to get concert buddies.
You can also filter profiles by relationship status. Thus, as a Single looking for a relationship, you wouldn’t want to be shown profiles of members who are already married or in a relationship. You can also filter profiles using nationality, ethnicity, religion, and body type.
If you only want to be shown profiles of members that are fans of Michael Jackson, No problem. You can type in particular artists, and get to be shown profiles of members who are fans of the artists. Given the music focus of Taste Buds, especially its aim to connect people with the same interest in music; it’s not surprising that you can use t search to get profiles of people who love a particular artist. In fact, the Oliver Twist in us wanted more; we wanted keyword search. So that users can type in a song title, and filter out members who have named the particular song as a favourite.
That said; the search tool of TasteBuds does not allow filtering with as many criteria as the advanced search tool of some of the leading dating services in the market, but it does the job.
Meeting People – overview
When you find a profile that you like, you’ll want to make contact. For that, you’ll want a good range of interaction and communication resources. Thankfully, Taste Buds ticks the box relatively in this regard.
Right on every profile header, you’ll find “send a song”, send a message, and like. For once, it was refreshing not to find “wink”. After all, what’s a virtual wink anyway? To show someone that you are interested, you may simply like the profile. Receiving a gift is very heartwarming and most often than not endears us to the giver.
Thus, instead of simply liking a profile that interests you, you may choose to send the person a song. Since the profile tells you the persons’ interests in music, it’ll even be better if the song you send is a sure-fire to be liked by the person.
Also, you can “like” or comment on many parts of the profile, especially the “overview” section where the profile owner gives more insight into himself/ herself with answers to some of the TasteBuds thought-provoking questions. For example, our test profile got a cutie who wrote in the “A little bit about me…” the following: “the only thing I want to be when I grow up is happy”.
We were arrested, and couldn’t resist but to comment on the post with “you must be a mind reader; Happiness is all I wish for”. Commenting on the user’s profile could be the perfect icebreaker, especially when you’ll have been left in the wilderness not knowing how to start a conversation.
Making a Connection – overview
Of all the online dating services that we have tested and reviewed, Taste Bud probably has the easiest and fastest registration process. To create an account, there are no longer “about me” forms to be filled; no brain cracking questions to answer, and the like. In literally 2 minutes from choosing to register, we had our account up and running, and we’re already checking out the profiles of TasteBuds members close to our location.
If you choose to, you can then do the simple necessities to get your profile from 60% to 100%. Even at that, your profile will be scanty, and you may want to go to navigate to “settings” and “profile” to beef it up with general user information and answer questions about your lifestyle and interests. Admittedly, you’ll need to do some thinking and some actual writing. For example, prior to landing on it in Taste Buds, I’ve never ever ever thought of “the song I’ll want to be played at my funeral”.
Though not compulsory, beefing up your profile will help you get more connections. With the profile out of the way, you’ll find that TasteBuds is also relatively easy to use. You’ll start seeing profiles of people near you immediately after you log in, and using the search tool to filter out profiles using your own criteria is easy-breezy.
Given the way Taste Buds is set up, there are various ways to break the ice when initiating contact. You’ll also have no problems with reporting or blocking any suspicious profiles, as these tools can be found right on the profile.
TasteBuds also gives you control over your profile. Not only are tools for reporting or blocking suspicious profiles easily accessible; but you can navigate to “settings” and include some privacy filters. For example, you can prevent people from outside your country from messaging you; you can prevent people outside an age range of choice from messaging you; prevent others from seeing your sexual orientation when viewing your profile; and more.
It’s also not news that mobile apps give a better experience than accessing a dating service using mobile browsers. Thus, many online dating services develop mobile apps. TasteBuds is also in that boat. However, it has only an iOS app. If you have Android devices, you’ll have to make do with accessing the website with mobile browsers; and as we know, it does not give an optimal user experience.
Using Tastebuds – overview
This is one tool of TasteBuds that can be used by free users to send messages to others. As a fee-paying service, only premium members can send and receive messages. However, TasteBuds have designed the message bomb so that free users can occasionally get messages across.
To use the Message Bomb; you pick a question, it will be sent to 8 of your matches, and you’ll be notified if any respond. There are about 20 questions from which you’ll pick. Many of these are fun questions with a music undertone, such as:
Then there are some of the questions that are generic such as:
Then there are the quirky ones, such as:
One thing with the “Message Bomb” is that you do not choose who your message will be sent to. After choosing your question, TasteBuds sends it to 8 randomly selected persons from your “matches”. If a response is strikingly interesting, you just might have found someone with similar interests.
The Soapbox is the forum of the dating service, where you can go to join conversations. You can join discussions on different topics like music, events, and more. You can also start your own thread.
For want of something to do on the dating site, you can navigate to “questions” and answer some quick-fire questions. There are about 82 of them, but you can choose to skip any or quit answering at any time.
However, answering these questions is relatively easy because there are pre-text answers to be chosen from an answer to each question. You’ll find different questions; from how you learnt about TasteBuds, to your smoking habits, to whether you play an instrument, to whether you can describe yourself as crazy, to how far you will go on a first date, and more.
If you are bored, Taste Buds invites you to help with image moderation. The exercise simply shows you some images, and you’ll click on any that you feel is not appropriate or good enough to be used in a profile (such as celebrity photos instead of the real profile owner, photos that are not clear enough, or not showing the face of the user, or cartoons/ illustrations, etc).
So if you are bored; you can navigate to “bored” and start clicking on photos that you’ll not want to see in a profile. TasteBuds says that whoever does the most wins a cookie. Really; a cookie! For this image moderation, TasteBuds even shows a leader board called “leaderboard” for good measure. There are an all-time leader board and the leader board for a particular day.
As can be deduced already, TasteBuds is a fee-based online dating service which means that you have to pay (buy a subscription pack) to be able to use the service to fully date.
Granted, there is a free plan which members can use without opening the wallet/ purse; however, the free plan is limited.
With the free plan, you can: create an account; build a profile; get match suggestions; search the membership base for more matches; access “Soapbox” and join discussions; access features such as “questions” and “bored”; and use interactive features such as likes, “send a song”, and message box.
However, if you do not want your interaction to be limited to liking a profile or message bombs to random users, if you’ll want to engage in thoughtful conversations via messaging, you’ll want to upgrade to a paid plan, what TasteBuds calls buying a Backstage Pass.
With the Backstage Pass (aka paid plan), you can: Send and receive private messages, have an ad-free dating experience in the platform, hide your online status, and visit profiles anonymously.
Free plan versus paid plan – overview
It can be gleaned from many reviews that people rate fee-based services higher than free services. This is because a lot has shown that the fees charged shut the door to a lot of fakes and scammers that otherwise would have come in. However, though users welcome the charges, they’ll want these to be reasonably low.
TasteBuds does relatively well in this regard. It has one service plan that has three subscription packs. Having one service plan means that all subscribers will have access to the same features, and the difference between any two subscribers will be the duration of access. We’ve seen in reviews of dating sites with multiple services plans that many users do not like the idea of being a paid subscriber and still missing out on some special features that are exclusive to some higher-priced plan. Thus, the one service plan of TasteBuds is very welcomed.
The three subscription packs of the plan are a 1-month pack which cost $10 per month; 3 months pack which cost $19.98, and breaks down to $6.66 per month to give a 33% cost saving; and 6 months pack which cost $30.00, and breaks down to $5.00 per month to give a 50% cost saving. Thus, you will be better served financially if you opt for longer-term subscriptions.
The big question is whether TasteBuds is expensive or cheap. Suffice it to say that many of the leading dating sites in the market have month by month subscriptions costing over $20; also, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a dating service with the cost of the 3 months pack not in double figures. Thus, TasteBuds definitely come out as cheap when compared to the dating sites in the market.
Pricing – Overview
The ideal dating service should afford a convenient payment. Thankfully, TasteBuds ticks this box. The online dating service accepts payment via PayPal and all the major credit and debit cards. With the cards and PayPal, you shouldn’t have a problem with paying for a TasteBuds subscription no matter where you may be resident.
It should also be said that subscriptions are automatically renewed at expiration. If you purchased a 3 months pack; when it expires, your account will be extended by a further 3 months, and you will be charged accordingly. This, according to TasteBuds, is to ensure that users’ conversations with other members will not be interrupted.
Payment Method – overview
TasteBuds is a legitimate dating site. Given that there are many scam platforms in cyberspace, before using any online platform, it is wise to determine that it is legit. Using anything but a legit platform could lead to being ripped off. In this regard, there’s no doubt that TasteBuds is legit.
Our first legit test is legality; and TasteBuds ticks that box. First, it is operated by TasteBuds Media Ltd, which is a 100% legal company. Suffice it to say that companies with full legal certificates are less likely to be a scam.
Another legit test is visibility or industry recognition, and TasteBuds also ticks that box. TasteBuds have been featured by top industry watchers and followers like BBC, the Guardian, The Huffington Post, Time Magazine and more. Suffice it to say that scam sites cannot gain the recognition of such reputable institutions.
Another legit test is the test of time, and TasteBuds ticks the box. Since its founding in 2020, TasteBuds has continued seamless operation for about 9 years. Suffice it to say that scam sites cannot continue operation for so long, because it doesn’t take long for scamming activities to be discovered, and they pack up and run after being discovered.
The ultimate legit test is “fitness for purpose”; and TasteBuds ticks that box. This is the ability of the service to do that which it purports to do; and in this case, it is connecting people through music for dating, socializing, discovering music and more. In this regard; Julian Keenaghan reports that TasteBuds has connected persons who have gone on to have happy marriages. Though we didn’t find any marriage success stories in our search of the independent review platforms, we did find a lot of success stories of people finding new music, getting new friends, getting concert buddies, and more.
Thus, there is no doubt that TasteBuds is legit. The testament includes that it: is operated by a 100% legal company, is recognized by reputable industry watchers, has an operating record that is almost up to a decade, and has successfully connected people for serious relationships, friendships, discovering music and more.
Legitimacy – overview
TastesBuds is safe. Online services need more than just to be legit. Safety is also very important. While a legit platform will not rip you off, if it is not safe, sensitive data that you share with it (such as credit card details) may leak out, and you’ll be exposed to all the fraudsters in cyberspace.
TasteBuds also ticks the box in this regard. It says that it employs a lot of measures to ensure the safety of users’ data. One such method is SSL encryption, which is the industry standard for ensuring the private connection between two devices communicating over a public network like the internet. Data is also encrypted using bank-grade protocols to ensure that even if captured, it is unreadable by hackers. Thus, it’s safe to say that TasteBuds is safe in safeguarding users’ data.
Another aspect of safety is making the platform relatively free of bots, fakes, and scam artists. You don’t want to be connected to scammers on a platform only pretending to be members. It should be said that TasteBuds has zero-tolerance for fakes and scammers, and do not hesitate to kick them out of the platform when identified. As such there are easily accessible tools for reporting a suspicious profile or blocking the profile.
However, when it comes to gates that’ll prevent the entry of these bad elements into the platform, TasteBuds has a lot of catching up to do. For example, it does not have any of the profile verifications of some leading dating sites in the market. Even its email verification fails utterly because registration can still be completed without doing the verification.
Safety – overview
TasteBuds is a legit website. Music gives common ground. TasteBuds works on that and brings people together through music. Though always classed among the dating sites, TasteBuds is more than just a dating service. The underlying concept is to connect people having the same interest in music; the connection can be just for meeting new friends, finding concert buddies, discovering new music, and yes, dating.
TasteBuds is easily the easiest site of its kind to sign up to. With no long questionnaires to answer, you‘ll be up and running in literally 2 minutes. You only need to nominate a username, name your favourite music, upload a photo, and you can start viewing other people on the platform with the same interest in music.
The site comes out with all the features you’ll want from a typical dating service; you get match suggestions, there’s an advanced tool to go fishing yourself, profiles can get very detailed to give quality insight, and there is a range of interactive tools. TasteBuds really shines in its music discovery function. You can search and listen to songs added by other users.
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This site is a scam - feel free to contact me. I paid for 6 months and none of the features work, the website help desk does not respond back, but they do take your money. If you would like to see evidence I would love to video chat and share my screen so that you can see all this yourself.