If you’ve never played Heardle, now’s your last chance. This Wordle-inspired music game is shutting down on May 5th. Spotify, which acquired Heardle in 2022, hasn’t explained the reason for this closure.
The idea behind Heardle is pretty clever. Every day, Heardle provides a short clip for a song. You have six chances to guess this song—each time you guess wrong, you get to hear a longer clip. If you’re familiar with a song, you might figure it out within a few seconds. But Heardle covers a wide variety of music genres, so if you play every day, you’re guaranteed to lose often.
Heardle originally pulled music from SoundCloud. And, as a result, it utilized a very limited selection of well-known songs. After Spotify bought Heardle, the music selection expanded, and the change was immediately noticeable. Heardle began to use songs that were “popular,” but not necessarily well-known. (I gave up on the game after four straight days of weird indie pop tracks.)
According to Spotify, Heardle was a “playful way to enhance music discovery and help artists reach new fans.” But the idea of using Heardle as a music discovery service is a bit of a stretch—some people don’t want to hear the song that made them lose their weeklong winning streak, and besides, Heardle isn’t built into the Spotify app.
That said, the Wordle craze is over. It’s safe to assume that Heardle‘s daily user count has dwindled significantly. And Spotify has plenty of new music discovery features in its app, including an AI-powered DJ.
You can still play Heardle until May 5th. Spotify suggests taking screenshots of your player stats, as everything will disappear upon shutdown.
Source: Spotify via TechCrunch
