Spotify makes 'difficult decision' to drop Heardle - BBC

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By Manish Pandey

Newsbeat reporter

Spotify has announced it is dropping Heardle - the interactive music guessing game inspired by Wordle.

It comes less than a year after the company bought the name-that-song game last July.

Heardle plays a short burst of a mystery track and challenges users to guess the song as quickly as possible.

"After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to say goodbye," a spokesman said.

Spotify added it would "focus our efforts on other features for music discovery".

When it bought the game last year, the music streaming service wanted it to be "a tool for musical discovery".

But fans quickly began to complain, with issues around app access and gaming statistics not moving over being some of the problems.

Screenshot of the message which greets Heardle users

Like Wordle, the game has become a daily habit for many music lovers.

Statistics from SimilarWeb suggest 41 million people visited Heardle's webpage before it was bought.

But those numbers began to drop, according to TechCrunch.

So what went wrong?

Daryl Baxter, an author and technology journalist at iMore, says he was not surprised to see Heardle being dropped.

He feels the initial decision was "a panic buy" and inspired by the New York Times buying Wordle in January 2022.

"They saw it as maybe the next big thing, and unfortunately it went by the wayside," he tells Newsbeat.

According to Daryl, one of the reasons why it's not worked out could be with how it works - or doesn't - with Spotify the app.

"Heardle hasn't been integrated well enough into [Spotify] itself, so you can't compete with friends. You have to use the web [to access it].

"It feels like Spotify have missed the mark, because it feels like an easy win."

stock image of an annoyed woman wearing headphones

The difference with Wordle's inclusion with the New York Times has been stark too, Daryl says.

"The statistics carried over, winning streaks were carried over. And they've committed to making sure they were going to be looking after the service.

"But it's also a natural fit, because it has a really famous crossword section."

For an app to succeed, Daryl feels there has to be "a simple design".

"It has to appeal to all age ranges and have a unique hook too. It has to have something that grabs the user's attention and makes you press that download or buy button," he says.

"But also, have forward thinking like think how the app could be integrated into apps like Apple Music, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter."

It's currently unclear whether Heardle will continue to exist elsewhere, and it's due to close on 5 May.