Calling all music lovers! Word on the street is that there is a new dating application that allows you to connect with your musical soulmate. MakroMusic promises this and more, claiming to be the “best music dating app”. Could MakroMusic be the next big thing, or is it full of empty promises?
Setting Up a Profile
To gain access to MakroMusic, a profile is necessary. When you are creating an account, you are prompted to connect your Spotify/YouTube account. Unfortunately, MakroMusic developers have not created an option for Apple Music users yet. The application then allows you to build up a user profile that creates a full overview of your personality. Users can upload photos of themselves and add details such as a username, height, and their gender identity (with three options including male, female, and non-binary). There is also a feature for you to include your interests. The options here are wide, ranging from animals and food to travel and creativity. The application also provides profile questions that you can answer, such as your go-to karaoke songs or a concert you would want to go to. After this process, MakroMusic then requires the user to select their favourite tracks and artists.
Matching
After creating an account, MakroMusic offers many options to match your profile to others.
Compatibility
This feature connects users with similar profiles based on their favorite artists and currently or recently played songs. You can narrow the search by using sliders that limit the age, gender, and location of the profile. This feature has been proved to have limited functionality with the distance and age sliders leading to inaccurate results. A South African user was matched with someone from a different continent, and many of the users appeared to be older than the specified age range.
Instant Matches
This is the faster matching option. A user is matched with a profile that is listening to the same song or same artist at the same time as them.
Explore
If you do not have any luck with the other two matching options, you can use a wider approach. A user can view songs that are currently being played by other profiles. They can click on the song to play it and get matched with the other accounts listening to the song. Similarly to the compatibility feature, a user can restrict the search based on age, gender, and location. When tested, this feature was functional. However, the application randomly adds songs to the queue that play immediately after the selected song. This can feel quite invasive to a user.
After collecting matches, you can then like a profile that you feel drawn to. This option functions in the same way as it does on other standard dating applications. You can swipe right to indicate interest or left to indicate disinterest in a profile. Additionally, a user can only communicate with a person who has also liked their profile. However, there is a catch if you are an Android phone user. Unless an Android user listens to the same song as the person who liked their profile, they are not able to communicate with them. The only way to avoid this is by paying a weekly fee of R233.99. The application will constantly remind users of this when they click on the like button.
There is no free trial that can save you from this fate.
Messages
This feature allows users who have mutually liked each other’s profiles to communicate via text message. It also includes options such as voice messages, picture sharing, and voice calls. Unfortunately, the voice call option is also a paid feature.
User Experience
MakroMusic has been met with positive reception on the Google Play Store with an average rating of 4.4 stars from 45 000 reviews. Many have praised the uniqueness of the application, while others have reacted positively to its user-friendly nature. On the other hand, some have expressed concerns about the functionality of the age and location filters, as well as the long list of paid features on the application. Google user Chafik Benarrioua expressed his frustration over how “every little thing is pay-to-use”.
Some users have suggested that MakroMusic is saturated with fake users and bots. Users are matched with different accounts and different names that share the same photos. These seemingly “fake” users are also quick to request a phone number exchange, which is suspicious. Checking one of the phone numbers revealed that it was not linked to a specific name. This raises concerns about the truthfulness of some of the accounts on MakroMusic. However, other users report being matched with real profiles.
MakroMusic brings a fresh approach to the dating scene with unique matching features such as “Compatibility” and “Instant Matches”. However, the application is flawed due to the concerns over paid features, fake profiles, and limited functionality of some of its features. If MakroMusic can address these challenges, it could be the next big thing in the world of dating.
