Promo for Zedd's new album on Tinder lets you swipe right on a fake profile for the artist to get a discounted download price of $3.99
Tinder Gets Into Music by Offering Zedd's New Album for $3.99 — As Tinder continues to ramp up its marketing appeal for brands …
Context & Ripple Effects
Two months after the age-based pricing controversy around Tinder Plus, the app is showing advertisers a different kind of revenue story: a native promo unit where users swipe right on a fake artist profile and can then buy Zedd's new album for $3.99. It lands while Adweek notes Tinder is ramping up its marketing appeal for brands.
The promo reads as an early experiment in what became a longer arc: within about a year Tinder added a Spotify integration letting matches see each other's favorite songs and artists, and by 2017 it was selling Tinder Gold subscriptions at $4.99 a month. Music first appears here as a brand-engagement hook before it becomes product surface.
First-order effects
- Zedd's camp gets a discounted-price sales channel placed directly in the swipe deck, trading margin for reach with an audience primed on his fake profile.
Second-order effects
- Other artists and labels now have a template for buying attention inside dating apps, pressuring Tinder to formalize branded-profile placements as an ad product.
Third-order effects
- If profile-shaped promos prove out, dating platforms evolve from matchmakers into commerce-and-media surfaces — the same monetization instinct that later produced paid tiers like Tinder Select.
The trend: Dating apps are turning user attention inside the swipe deck into a sellable surface, starting with branded artist profiles and scaling toward music integrations and premium subscriptions.