Spotify is closing its doors. Last year, it acquired Heardle, a Wordle-like music guessing game
Spotify, which paid an undisclosed amount last July to acquire the Wordle-inspired music guessing game Heardle, is shutting down. Like Wordle, Heardle gives users six attempts to guess the name and artist of a well-known song. However, rather than having users type letters to construct words, Heardle allows users to predict the song’s intro. Spotify promised that Heardle would continue to be available for free to all users at the time of its purchase. The company has now announced that it would end Heardle on May 5 in order to concentrate on its other goals related to music discovery.
On the Heardle website, an in-app message is being used to announce the changes.
We understand that Spotify decided to close Heardle in order to focus more of its efforts on music discovery through recent improvements to the app rather than on off-platform games that Wordle inspired.
Spotify significantly redesigned its mobile app experience last month, introducing new features like podcast autoplay and Smart Shuffle for playlist recommendations, as well as new TikTok-style discovery streams for music and podcasts. Additionally, it released an “AI DJ” that plays music for you based on its analysis of user preferences. The more you use the function, the more intelligent it becomes over time.
Heardle was no longer a significant component of Spotify’s overall music discovery initiatives in light of these revisions. Furthermore, there is less of a financial incentive to experiment with side projects like an entertaining music game, like many IT companies that have seen budget-tightening measures like layoffs in recent months.
Still, Heardle had been somewhat well-liked when it was purchased. The game reached its pinnacle in March 2022 with 69 million monthly desktop and mobile site visitors, according to data from web analytics company Similarweb. Prior to the heardle spotify partnership, those visits had decreased to 41 million. According to the company, visitors kept dropping, which probably made Heardle’s continuous maintenance less profitable for Spotify.
Heardle’s prospects may have also been fading, as the Wordle frenzy appeared to be waning after The New York Times acquired the popular word game in January of last year. Although we are aware that Heardle kept a portion of its most devoted customers after the acquisition closed, Spotify will not comment on overall usage or repeat engagement using any particular measures. However, the decision to redirect the company’s investments elsewhere wasn’t taken until Spotify discovered how Heardle users were interacting with the game.
In the game, players can click a button to listen to the entire song on Spotify after guessing the song. A sufficient number of players probably chose to simply quit the game and come back at a later time.
Stated differently, Heardle eventually failed to assist Spotify in realizing its objectives related to enhanced music discovery. Additionally, a lot of Heardle’s offerings were also replicating the business’s other music discovery features—and doing so outside of the Spotify app—as a result of the revamp.
Nevertheless, the news that Heardle would soon be shutting down won’t likely come as a relief to fans of the game. Perhaps the exception would be the various websites hosting Heardle clones and the Forbes contributors who have to put up the daily answers and hints.
Spotify released a statement confirming the game’s cancellation.
A company representative told TechCrunch, “After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to say goodbye to Heardle as we focus our efforts on other features for music discovery.”
Users of the website will see a notice warning them of the impending shutdown on May 5.
We are aware that Heardle was not the focus of any team; thus, there will be no layoffs or organizational changes.
We’re informed that although Spotify is abandoning Heardle, it isn’t necessarily giving up on other kinds of interactive experiences. In addition to polls and Q&As, the company’s interactive AI DJ feature allows podcast fans to communicate with their favorite creators. Additionally, it will keep funding additional gaming initiatives, such as its in-app gaming center, Spotify island on Roblox, and additional Xbox and PlayStation connections.
The live streaming app Spotify Live, which was a competitor to Clubhouse, was shut down earlier this month by Spotify as well.