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As tourists in Times Square made their way to The Lion King or Olive Garden on Thursday, they may have noticed the notoriously crowded area was more dense than usual. When the Grindr logo flashed in pink, the reason became clear: Mutha was here.
The “mutha” in question was Madonna. Since April, she’s been the new face of the app. The partnership culminated in a 20-minute concert featuring songs from her upcoming album Confessions on a Dancefloor: Part II, complete with a flash mob of dancers in the crowd.
Madonna emerged from one of the giant screens, singing and dancing on a spinning stage from a suspended balcony; in addition to new music, she launched into a trio of hits from 2005’s Confessions on a Dancefloor, including the megahit “Hung Up.”
For Grindr users, the advertising for Madonna’s 15th album has been hard to miss. When users opened the app on April 24, Madonna’s voice greeted them with “Hello, it’s mother.” The app’s homepage perpetually has a banner promoting either the Grindr-exclusive vinyl or a livestream of her Times Square performance. And in the middle of grid photos displaying available users in your area, a pink icon shows the pop heavyweight as “0 feet away.”
Hardcore fans can even make Madonna part of their profile: Her albums are available as “tags,” alongside options for kinks, hobbies, and tribes. In a video roundtable with a group of friends including Bob the Drag Queen and Jeremy O. Harris, she talked about her stance on “hole pics,” and she said JFK Jr. was her best “dick down.”
Madonna’s longtime manager Guy Oseary says the artist “wanted to get back to the basics.” Sonically, this translated to dance music for an artist who got her start in the New York club scene back in the ’80s. Culturally, this meant the LGBTQ+ community that has long-defined that club culture and that Madonna has been aligned with and heavily advocated for since the height of the AIDS crisis.
“It felt authentic and organic,” Oseary continues. His own introduction to the community came from working with Madonna, which started in 1992 when he worked at her label Maverick. “The first single ‘Bring Your Love’ initially just went to two LGBTQ clubs before we shared music with anyone. Even the first radio station was iHeart’s PRIDE Radio. The whole way through is not just to support the community but also share with the community first.”
Oseary reached out to Grindr last fall, emailing the company’s CEO George Arison (Arison thought the initial email, sent from a Gmail account, was a scam). Eventually, Oseary came to Grindr HQ in San Francisco to play the music and start planning.
Arison’s team had already been experimenting with music-marketing campaigns last year. They replaced the message notification sound with the opening vocals of Christina Aguilera’s “Come on Over Baby (All I Want Is You)” ahead of Aguilera’s September appearance headlining the Portola Music Festival in San Francisco. Hilary Duff filmed a series of pop-up videos and new music teases that were available in-app. And artists like Troye Sivan and Slayyyter have filmed video content exclusively for Grindr.
“We have users that are on the app for an hour a day,” Arison says. Compared to apps like Snapchat, Grindr’s base of 15 million average monthly users may be smaller but the engagement is significantly higher. And the demographic of Grindr is crucial, especially for the music-marketing sector. With streaming dwindling the monetary value of music and ticket prices becoming increasingly less affordable for the average music fan, physical albums remain a valuable product but are hard to move. The industry has slowly learned the need to invest in bases that will actually pay for products.
The answer in pop music, at least, has long been the LGBTQ+ community, specifically adult gay men with disposable income. While the percentage of male same-sex couples with children as financial dependents has jumped over the years, the average is still below 20 percent. Before it began experimenting with both music marketing and album commerce, Grindr under Arison had already explored ways to provide products its users already purchase directly to them.
“If Grindr has this unique connection to the user base, can we start capturing more of the wallet share of those users?” he asks. “Can we offer them products and/or services that they currently buy somewhere else that actually maybe they should buy from us because we can do it better for them by speaking to what they want?” In 2024, Grindr launched Woodwork, its foray into healthcare services where they sell ED medications and GLP-1s.
“The results speak for themselves,” Arison continues. “I joined in 2022, and we did $195 million in revenue. This year, we're guiding to $530.5 million.”
While Grindr is not pivoting away from its essential purpose of facilitating hookups and dating, the app has rebranded over the years with the tagline “the Global Gayborhood in Your Pocket.” But some longtime users have been frustrated with the changes, as WIRED previously reported, complaining about the app embracing AI and the increasing number of product initiatives and ads.
Grindr chief marketing officer Tristan Pineiro admits he balks at people calling Grindr “just a hookup app.” To him, Arison and the rest of the team, Grindr has long been about building community (which has naturally been aided by the sexual connection it offers).
“The majority of gay people don't have the fortune to experience an actual gayborhood,” he explains, noting how Grindr is not only available in 190 countries but that being openly gay is either illegal or deeply frowned upon in 60 of them. He says the app partners with NGOs to “disseminate all kinds of information on sexual health, on safety, on legality. As well as all of that, we can continue to engage them and bring them a part of the gayborhood through music and entertainment.”
Intense pop fandom is one way to do that. “Within the community, when we get our gay wings, we choose our diva of choice, and we stick loyally with her for the rest of our lives,” Pineiro adds.
There’s no question that Madonna is the epitome of a diva with a loyal following. In the “Confessions With … Madonna” video, playwright Jeremy O. Harris opened up about how the first time he had seen gay men kissing was in her concert documentary Truth or Dare.
“Madonna is part of the fabric and the culture,” Oseary says. He reveals that he even considered trying to get Madonna to buy Grindr when it was for sale years ago. “She’s been there from day one.”
The success of the partnership is yet to be determined. Grindr won’t reveal the exact numbers from the exclusive vinyl album presale just yet (but Pineiro did point out that the most popular albums chosen as “tags” have been Erotica and American Life). As for the users, it’s clear that the Madonna takeover has started some conversation. X was ablaze upon the release of the exclusive vinyl and the “Confessions With …” interview. On Reddit, some have been arguing over whether or not the campaign and total immersion of the app is effective or annoying. Some took issue with the loud “Hello, it’s mother” greeting, worried that it can out closeted users and in some cases alleging it outed cheaters.
Grindr and Madonna’s team are unsure if or how the partnership will continue past the album release on July 3. While Arison didn’t divulge the exact amount the concert cost to put on, he says it was “a lot.” He also admits it’s been “stressful” from an engineering standpoint for the 80 person team handling the app’s backend. “We had to build a ton of technology from scratch," he says.
Between Grindr, a partnership with rent fintech company Bilt and surprise appearance at Coachella, Madonna has been on a promotional blitz to secure Confessions II as her tenth Number One album. For Oseary, these unique partnerships speak to her own desire to keep a step ahead of the culture.
“We were the first to do lots of things with Madonna,” he says. “She helped launch the iTunes store with Steve Jobs. We did the first hologram performance of the Gorillaz. We're always looking for interesting ways to do things. She’s an innovative artist.”
