Dating app Coffee Meets Bagel taps Yelp, Spotify to help plan your first date

Dating app Coffee Meets Bagel is launching two new web apps to help you discover the ideal location for a first date and to let you collaborate on a soundtrack for the proceedings.

The first of the two offerings is Date Spots: a site that provides first date locations (such as bars, coffee shops, and restaurants) using Yelp’s database, reports TechCrunch. All you have to do is enter your city — adding your neighborhood is optional — then use the self-explanatory icons to choose the price range to match your selection. The app will then surface Yelp listings with a minimum of a four-star rating based on the info you’ve provided, along with additional details, including the “noise level” and “ambiance” of the spot.

Coffee Meets Bagel claims that 84 percent of its users use review tools like Yelp to find first date locations. Date Spots is its attempt to capitalize on the trend and make the process easier for singles.

Its other new web app is not as practical but could provide a great way to connect and share common musical interests. Mixtape allows the dating app’s users to sync their Spotify profiles and create playlists with their matches. The web tool will also show your match the tracks you both share, and your top three songs.

Seeing as music makes for a reliable conversation starter, Mixtape certainly holds a lot of appeal. However, things could go awry if you despise the other person’s taste in music. The best case scenario could see Mixtape serve as a great way to find and share new music — with Coffee Meets Bagel even offering its own track suggestions for users to check out.

In the fierce world of mobile dating, Coffee Meets Bagel has been busy creating a niche for itself as a relationships (not hookups) app that provides a curated service for men and women. In July, the dating app rolled out a major overhaul to its platform, which originally only showed users one potential match per day (known as bagels). Ditching that system, it switched to 21 match options for male users, and five for female members. It also announced that it had generated 2.5 billion introductions and created more than 50,000 couples.