With Spotify Dropping Heardle, Are They No Longer Interested In Gaming

Spotify gained in July last year (2022), and less than a year later, they are unloading the musical game, causing a significant outcry from fans of Wordle and Heardle. As of the 5th of May, 2023, the game is no longer available on Spotify.

Heardle is a popular game among enthusiasts inspired by the even more popular game Wordle. You need to guess the title or the artist of a particular song just by listening to a snippet; once you have guessed the song, you can click on the listen button and listen to the whole song on Spotify.

Why Get Rid of It

In its communication, Spotify did not provide a specific reason why it cancelled Heardle; a spokesperson from Spotify said the company wanted to focus on other features for music discovery, which is a very vague response. Nonetheless, Spotify’s silence hasn’t stopped fans from speculating why the game was cancelled.

• They have limited song choices. Some players complained that Heardle’s song choice wasn’t varied enough. There was a lot of pop and not enough of the other genres; there was also the impression that song selection was based on social media popularity rather than Billboard hits.
• Availability. We all knew Heardle wasn’t available everywhere in the world. Still, recently people who had been playing the game would receive an error message telling them Heardle wasn’t available in their region.
• Expense. With the acquisition of Heardle, Spotify was looking to increase its numbers, but this may have been different. Some players played the game but didn’t stay to listen. Also, the numbers started declining after they purchased the game. In March of 2022, the game had a steady 69 million monthly visitors, but by June/July 2022, the numbers had dropped to 41 monthly visits. Maintenance costs were no longer justifiable.

Alternatives to Heardle

While we understand Heardle was a unique game with its characteristics, we found three alternative games you could play to satisfy that game craving.

• Lyricle
• Bing
• Songlio

If the above doesn’t appeal, check out topcasinosites.co.za to find the games you love that have winning potential.

Is Spotify out of Gaming?

Heardle was the first game Spotify had ever purchased; many thought Spotify was entering the gaming market. Offloading Heardle doesn’t mean they have given up on gaming; there is still STATTOGORIES which is quite popular among music enthusiasts.

Other interactive gaming features are available on Spotify, such as the AI DJ; there are also talks of collaborations between the music giant and Xbox and PlayStation. The company has also indicated investing more resources in the gaming project Spotify Island. This was likely an impulse buy by Spotify, feeling pressured by the purchase of Wordle by The New York Times.

Lastly

Earlier this year, Spotify also closed down Spotify Live, its live-streaming app, without much explanation. Usually, when companies start offloading projects and assets, it’s to pool resources for one big project that will have more significant gains for them. Or they are in dire financial strain; we hope it’s the former rather than the latter for Spotify.
It would be great to see them enter the VR/MR gaming sphere with a multi-player karaoke-like virtual game that somebody could play anywhere.