Spotify to Shut Down Music Guessing Game Heardle
Spotify is to shut down Heardle, the Wordle-inspired music guessing game it took over in July 2022, TechCrunch reports(Opens in a new window).
The game, which offers players six tries to guess a popular song, will sunset on May 5, as Spotify reportedly seeks to devote more energy toward in-app music discovery rather than off-platform initiatives like Heardle.
Heardle worked by linking to the full Spotify track of a successfully guessed song and players received more points the quicker they guessed.
A pop-up message on the Heardle website(Opens in a new window) tells players: “Thanks for playing Heardle, but unfortunately we have to say goodbye. From May 5th, Heardle will no longer be available. If you have stats that you would like to save, make sure you go to your stats(Opens in a new window) and take a screenshot by May 4th. It won’t be possible to access them after May 4th.”
The shutdown comes as the platform was reportedly losing web visits. According to stats from web analytics firm Similarweb(Opens in a new window), Heardle hit a peak of 69 million monthly desktop and mobile visits in March 2022. Just before Spotify bought the platform in July last year, visits had dropped to 41 million. Last month Heardle had just six million total visitors.
As TechCrunch reports, Spotify decided to pull investment from Heardle after learning how players were engaging with the game; it’s likely too few players exited the game after playing instead of listening to full tracks on Spotify after successfully guessing a song. This, TechCrunch assesses, meant Heardle did not do enough to improve music discovery.
Spotify, which did not immediately respond to PCMag’s request for comment, told TechCrunch: “After careful consideration,
Read more on pcmag.com
