Inside Madonna’s Horny Full-Throttle Grindr Takeover

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.”Courtesy of Madonna; Photographed by Ricardo Gomes Courtesy of Madonna; Photographed by Ricardo GomesFor 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.”Courtesy of Madonna; Photographed by Ricardo Gomes Courtesy of Madonna; Photographed by Ricardo GomesOseary 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.Courtesy of Madonna: Photographed by Alex Antonioni Courtesy of Madonna: Photographed by