‘You’re more likely to hook up on a first date with someone who’s a big fan of Kurt and co,’ says Alex Parish, who, along with Julian Keenaghan, founded website Tastebuds.fm, which matches couples based on their musical tastes. Coldplay listeners, on the other hand, would be ‘least inclined’ to go home with you.

When it comes to forging new relationships, there is no doubt music can be a powerful connector. When social psychologists Jason Rentfrow (of the University of Cambridge) and Samuel Gosling (University of Texas) asked a study group what were the most important personal qualities, music not only scored the highest from a list that included food, books and films but the participants also believed it revealed a lot about who people were.

When it comes to judging others, it appears that musical taste is an indication of value similarity. So musical taste – or lack of – has the potential to make or break a relationship. I’ve seen this first-hand. A female friend of mine ended a budding romance when her beau revealed his favourite band was The Script. ‘I lost all respect for him,’ she told me. ‘It had to end.’

‘We believe music can say a lot about a person and that people who have the same music taste might have a lot in common,’ says Alex. ‘We tested it. It works.’ When you register on the website, you include your favourite bands and you can also link your Spotify, Last.fm and Facebook accounts. You are then shown people who have similar musical taste and can message them privately.

Of course, Tastebuds.fm isn’t alone in zero-ing in on a specific social sector, with everything from petloverdating.co.uk and datingvegetarian.co.uk to muddymatches.co.uk (for those partial to rural life), hoping that their niche appeal will help them stand out from an estimated 1,400 online dating sites in Britain.

For it’s own part, Tastebuds.fm is making noises on both sides of the Atlantic: Londoners bonded most over the song My Number by Foals, while in New York people were brought together by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s hip hop hit Thrift Shop. The biggest musical turn-off for both sexes is Canadian rock band Nickelback, of How You Remind Me fame.

The fundamental ethos of the site, however, is that ‘breaking the ice by sharing music makes meeting new people fun rather than an uncomfortable experience’. At least a dozen couples have married and there’s a Tastebuds baby on the way. Whether the happy couple are fans of Nirvana or Coldplay is unknown. 

Originally featured in the Metro newspaper