It's time to say goodbye to Heardle, the song-guessing game that became a massive hit last year. Spotify, which bought the game last summer, recently announced that it will be shutting down Heardle's servers starting May 5th. If you're a die-hard fan of the game, you better hurry and take a screenshot of your stats because they won't be available after May 4th.
Heardle burst onto the scene in the aftermath of Wordle's meteoric success, quickly becoming one of the most popular and successful Wordle clones out there. At its peak, Heardle reportedly had an impressive 69 million monthly visitors in March of last year, according to third-party data. But just before Spotify acquired the game, Heardle's popularity seemed to be dwindling, with monthly visitor numbers falling to 41 million.
When Spotify acquired Heardle, it saw the game as a potential music discovery tool. Whether a player guessed the song correctly or not, they were provided with a link to hear the full track on Spotify. However, it seems that the game didn't quite hit the mark in terms of music discovery, and it may not have helped much in driving clickthrough rates. In addition, some players were disappointed with the game's repetitive song choices, featuring several tracks from one artist over a relatively short time.
It's unclear whether Spotify's lack of investment in the game contributed to its eventual downfall, but it's hard to imagine that maintaining a daily song choice and running Heardle would have taken a ton of work. Nevertheless, there won't be any layoffs as a result of the game's closure, since Spotify reportedly didn't have a team dedicated to working on Heardle.
So, it's time to bid farewell to Heardle and move on to the next big thing. Who knows what the next addictive game will be? But one thing's for sure, we'll keep our eyes peeled for it!
