House Music Dating

House music has been filling dancefloors since the late 1970s, and it's still everywhere – from tiny basements to day parties to festival tents. Raver Dating is where people from the rave and electronic music world date – somewhere to meet someone who'd happily spend a Sunday afternoon dancing with you.

One name, a lot of music

Chicago, acid, deep, soulful, garage house and the Jersey sound, disco and nu-disco, tech house, Afro house, amapiano, Balearic, French, microhouse, progressive – house usually sits somewhere between 115 and 130 BPM, but that's about all its styles have in common. The more specific your profile is, the better your matches will be.

Where it came from

House grew out of disco. At the Warehouse in Chicago, open from 1977 to 1982, DJ Frankie Knuckles re-edited records he felt weren't long enough – stretching intros and breaks, adding new beats to old favourites – to keep disco's spirit alive as it fell out of fashion. That's widely seen as the foundation of house music.

Where the name came from is less settled. The most common story is that it's short for the Warehouse itself, a club whose regulars were mostly gay Black men. Others say it described music made at home on drum machines and synthesisers, or a club's “in-house” records.

How it spread

In the early 1980s Chicago's Hot Mix 5 on WBMX radio – Farley “Jackmaster” Funk among them – mixed Philly disco and Salsoul with electro-funk, Italo disco and electronic pop, and cheap drum machines and synths like the Roland TR-808 and TB-303 put production in more people's hands. Chicago's second wave brought hip house and ghetto house, while New York and New Jersey developed garage house – deeper, soulful, gospel-tinged – with the Paradise Garage at its heart.

In the UK, the late 1980s brought acid house, rave culture and the Second Summer of Love, fuelled by pirate radio in Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Wolverhampton and London, and labels such as Warp and Network. The 1990s brought superclubs like Cream, Godskitchen and Ministry of Sound. And in the 2020s, amapiano – South Africa's offshoot of house – went global.

How Raver Dating works

You set up a profile with your photos and interests, and get new match suggestions every day. They take into account your age range, distance, the kind of relationship you're after and what you're into – so if house is on your profile, it matters. Free ID verification puts a badge on your profile, and only your town is shown to other members.

Profile tips

• Pick out the parties and residents you love – it's an instant conversation starter.
• Mention your corner of house: “deep” and “tech” can mean very different Saturdays.
• Say if you're a day-party person or a till-close person.

Dancefloors and venues

House has its own dances – jacking (as in “Jack Your Body” and “Time to Jack”), footwork and lofting, with waacking and voguing close by – and its own landmark rooms: the Continental Baths, the Loft and the Paradise Garage in New York, the Warehouse in Chicago, and Manchester's Haçienda. Labels like Defected have kept the classic sound going, and Afro house in London helped give rise to UK funky.

Meeting someone safely

Take your time chatting on Raver Dating before you swap numbers. If someone tries to move you onto another app early on, you'll see a warning. Blocking and reporting are built in – more on our safety page. Into techno too? See techno dating.

Photo: Aleksandr Popov on Unsplash.