Vihan Patel

Finding your love match with similar music tastes was an unexplored niche within the dating category. How was the idea POM (Power Of Music) born?

When I was in university, I felt let down by the event experiences they offered to students in Cardiff. It was nothing like the types of events I was used to attending in London. So I decided to put up an event that offered something different. The response was really good and, as I had friends selling the tickets, I started expanding to other cities across the UK. I realised that depending on the city, the type of event, the music, the audience, and even the drinks were really different from each other.

Then COVID happened and the nightlife industry went to the bin. After 10 weeks in lockdown, I knew I wanted to work in the music industry and I thought about taking this project online. People meet and connect through music, and that would make a perfect app. It’s an easy idea to understand and to get people on board.

POM is all about harnessing the power of music, and has positioned itself as the dating app for music lovers. What’s the story you and your co-founder told at the beginning in order to stand out from other dating apps?

Dating apps are an interesting product. From a tech side, the goal is to have users leave the app, which is a silly metric. Our story is different because the way POM works is unlike others. Within a regular dating app, you meet people around you, and you swipe left and right based on how they look. We wanted to bring an edge into dating and decided to use music as a vehicle for emotion. In my personal opinion, the most successful relationships are about emotional understanding. The way we started telling the story was behind the science of emotion, not looks.

In the tech space, it’s common for people to focus on the way a product functions over the way it makes people feel. But how has brand strategy, marketing and tone of voice played a part in the launch and growth of POM?

Our brand strategy was quite focused on inclusivity. We weren’t going for that 1% of the population that ‘fit’ the current beauty standard. From the vision to our TOV, and even the way we execute stuff, we’re playful, we cross the line, and we’re not afraid to take risks. At first, it was a struggle because there was some resistance, but everything around our brand is value driven. We’re inclusive by design and nature.

What were some of the obstacles in the category you wanted to overcome?

Dating apps today have this idea of a dream user. A hot, blonde guy, with a six-pack… But that doesn’t represent the entire population. Dating as a whole is aimed at everyone, and that’s what we wanted to offer. Music has a thousand genres and is quite diverse and inclusive, just like POM.

POM’s launching campaign was ‘send playlists, not nudes’. Are there other campaigns that you’ve liked as much (by POM or other brands)?

The most recent one was: ‘Are you tired to fake orgasms to shit music? Download POM.’ We had a lot of positive responses, except for TFL, who took down our campaign in the tubes… But we decided to rent a car, spray it with the tagline, and drive it around London. I brought us over 7,000 downloads! I guess today, you can’t rely on the classic stuff, you have to make a difference and take a stand.

How do you envision the future of dating? And what impact do you think tech will have in it?

There hasn’t been a disruptor in dating. We disrupt the day to day. But at the end is Bumble VS Tinder, in a constant battle. It’s hard for a new player to take the podium. It’s tough to take the market share: everyone knows it and it’s used to it, but people are not ready for the real connection and look a bit deeper than that just yet. I’m hoping the future of dating involves less physical attraction.

We have some plans for the future. POM was a way into the dating and music industry. Our future is not gonna remain in dating. We’re capped in terms of competitors and limit of users. But we know people love music events, and that they love meeting new people.

If you were throwing a POM festival, what would it look like? What’s going on? Who’s invited? What’s on the menu? What’s on the playlist? Is there a dress code?

We’ve been thinking about it actually. In an ideal world, it would be all about music and based on the top eight music genres of our app, we would bring an artist’s headline. Of course, we would have eight stages and everyone would be invited.