From playlists to concerts, the music-driven dating app explores how music shapes culture, emotion, and connection in dating.
PHOENIX, Dec. 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Vinylly, the music-driven dating app founded by Rachel Van Nortwick, released new data today showing how music influences modern dating behavior, revealing clear differences in how men and women connect through the songs, artists and concerts they love.
The analysis, which examined 5,000 user interactions over the past 12 months, found that women tend to use Vinylly more intentionally, engaging more deeply with playlists and pressing play on songs nearly 17,000 times. Men viewed twice as many profiles and sent nearly six times as many messages, behavior the company says reflects broader exploratory patterns. The findings suggest that women use music to assess emotional alignment, while men use it to signal identity and cultural taste.
Genre and artist preferences reflected this divide. Women showed a strong affinity for emotionally driven artists such as David Bowie, Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles and Billie Eilish, while men favored artists including Drake, Radiohead, Kendrick Lamar and Deftones, using music as a marker of personality or aesthetic. Taylor Swift, Radiohead and Sleep Token appeared as shared favorites across genders, creating what Vinylly identifies as “compatibility bridges.
Concert histories further reinforced these differences. Women most recently attended shows by artists such as Taylor Swift, Usher and Pink, leaning toward nostalgic or narrative-driven performances. Men reported recent concerts from high-energy or legacy acts including Iron Maiden, Metallica and Green Day. Vinylly’s analysis found that early concert experiences also influenced long-term dating patterns, with women recalling pop and boy-band shows and men recalling metal and rock acts.
Users on Vinylly were most concentrated in Seattle, London, New York and Los Angeles, all cities with strong live music cultures and large dating communities. According to Van Nortwick, the data reflects a broader trend in which music functions as a powerful emotional and cultural signal in dating.
“Music is more than a soundtrack — it’s a language people use to reveal who they are,” Van Nortwick said. “Our data shows that what people listen to, and how they interact with music, shapes how they connect long before they meet in person.”
The full report and expanded insights are available here.
About Vinylly:
At Vinylly, we believe (and science has proven) that the music we love and the way we listen to it is a powerful window into who we are – connecting us on a deeper level and providing us with a solid foundation to develop and maintain lasting relationships. Vinylly is an inclusive dating app that matches users through a proprietary music profile generator or if a user chooses, an analysis of their streaming history. These combined with a few questions about the role music plays in their lives, enables Vinylly’s algorithm to provide “high volume” matches. Users have the ability to create and edit their playlists and to browse matches and press “play” when they want to connect, as well as chat and get concert tickets for first dates all without having to leave the app. Available on the U.S., U.K. and Canadian app stores, Vinylly was recently recognized by Mashable as one of the “8 dating apps that are bucking against Tinder’s model.” To learn more, visit www.vinyllyapp.com.
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