It seems that my blog is becoming a grave site for various niche sites that sprang up during what might be increasingly referred to as the ‘golden age’ of the world wide web, before AI slop, when social networks were fun, and the current monopolies hadn’t completely taken over. There was Ello, Keen (which harked back to social sharing sites), and now Tastebuds.fm shuts down today.
Launched back in 2010, the idea was that you could meet people and date by importing lists of your favourite music from Spotify, Last.fm (which I’m happy to say is still going at the moment, 18 years and 101,798 songs after I first joined) and Facebook.
Having signed up around 13 years ago, it’s one of those services that seemed like a really good idea but never really seemed to catch hold with enough people. I’ve dipped in an out over the years, mainly when single, but never enough for it to become a habit. Possibly because it straddled an odd line between being a social network, and a dating site.
The places I’ve lived over the last decade aren’t exactly in the middle of nowhere, but there never seemed to be enough local people talking about upcoming gigs. And being in a relationship, the dating side became irrelevant, meaning I’ve only logging in a handful of times in the last few years, mainly just to check out the bands and songs I’d listed on my profile in the past to see how my tastes have changed.
Judging by various comments around the web, most people seem to feel a similar way, although there are some nice stories of people meeting their significant other through the service.
It’s not the first website or business I’ve seen close, especially given how much Google has done to launch and shutter services of the years (or the loss of ThisIsMyJam back in 2015, which hit harder at the time). But seeing various people shutter their projects feels different now, especially when I’ve had accounts with them for more than a decade, and the rollout of AI is changing the nature of the internet. I’ve let a couple of side projects quietly fade out of existence already this year, and there are some more that won’t auto-renew in the future.
I do wonder if it’s just the fact I’m getting older, but talking to my son, people at DPiP and online, there’s a malais and melancholy which seems pretty broadly shared across generations for how things were.
So while I probably won’t be mourning the loss of Tastebuds.fm on a regular basis, it’s always a shame to see services disappear, and it hits a little harder than it would have done a few years ago.
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