Spotify Cancels Wordle-inspired Music Guessing Game 'Heardle'

Music streaming giant Spotify has confirmed that it will shut down Heardle, a Wordle-inspired music guessing game it acquired last July, reported first by TechCrunch.

The game gave players six tries to guess a popular song by listening to its introduction instead of typing in different letters to form words like in Wordle.

Why Heardle Was Introduced in the First Place

Spotify acquired Heardle as a part of its larger strategy to invest in music discovery. Nonetheless, the company has decided to cancel the game on May 5, to concentrate on other features for music discovery.

The company recently introduced a major revamp of its mobile app that brought new feeds for music and podcasts, Smart Shuffle for suggesting playlists, and an "AI DJ" that selects user tracks based on their music preferences.

Web analytics firm Similarweb reported that at its acquisition, Heardle had a significant number of monthly desktop and mobile web visits, reaching 69 million in March 2022.

However, before the Spotify deal, the number of visits had already dropped to 41 million. The decrease in popularity may have influenced the decision to shut down the game.

It is essential to mention that Wordle's popularity has been declining since The New York Times acquired the game in January last year, which could have had an impact on Heardle as well.

Although Spotify retained some of its devoted users after the acquisition, the company did not disclose any specific user or repeat engagement metrics. In Heardle, users were allowed to listen to the whole track on Spotify after guessing the song.

However, it is possible that a significant number of users did not take advantage of this feature and simply exited the game, intending to play again later.

After assessing players' engagement with Heardle, Spotify decided to shut down the game as it did not align with the company's objectives of enhancing music discovery.

Spotify's Statement

This move by Spotify to close down Heardle is in line with the recent trend of tech companies tightening their belts by cutting back on side projects, including leisurely music games, as there is less financial incentive to engage in such ventures.

Spotify confirmed shutting down the game with a statement to TechCrunch, saying, "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 will see a notice on the website informing them of the impending outage on May 5.

While the move to shut down Heardle may surprise some of its users, it appears to be part of Spotify's bigger plan to invest in better tools for music discovery within the Spotify app.