FanMatch allows users to search for potential mates based on upcoming festivals they plan to attend. Users create a profile and can select from hundreds of music festivals. It’s free to sign up, but users have a limited number of messages they can send to new potential hookups. Unlocking the boundless dating possibilities of unlimited messaging will cost $4 per week, $10 per month, and $20 for 3 months.
To ensure you’re conversing with real people users can choose to only receive messages from people who have been verified with a phone number and corresponding confirmation code, which then gives a user “Real” status. Users are also required to upload photos approved by moderators to send messages, a task which can take hours instead of the seconds it takes to be verified on sites like OkCupid or Tinder.
The press release for the service calls it “Tinder for music fans” and makes it pretty clear about the overall intentions of the service right from the start: “With more than 48 million singles attending live music events annually, that’s a lot of hooking up,” the release states.
And while FanMatch only has one basic “Event” tab that is associated with music festivals, it does offer plenty of customizing for one specific field: sex. There are 32 selections of sexual activities users can list as turn-ons, ranging from “classic sex” to sadomaschism. The app also has a section for those looking to become someone’s financial “sponsor” or to be financially “sponsored,” and given the nature of the overall layout, the financial support may not be strictly in exchange for a fun time at Coachella.
FanMatch is in beta at present, but other similar apps have already hit the market. Tastebuds.fm, for instance, is a dating app connecting people with shared musical tastes with over 1.4 million messages sent between users in June. And that’s just one of many in a crowded industry that has been one of the fastest growing this decade. Revenue from mobile dating apps increased by nearly 400 percent from $43 million in 2009 to $213 million in 2012, according to USA Today — the same year Tinder launched. In just December 2013, 10 percent of American adults visited a dating site for at least an hour a day.
According its founder Ellona Ferson, FanMatch hopes to “turn festivals of strangers into playgrounds of friends.” The app is currently in beta for Android and iOS but can be downloaded in the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, respectively.
