Spotify abandons Heardle less than a year after buying it

“Thanks for playing Heardle, but unfortunately we have to say goodbye,” the message reads. “From May 5th, Heardle will no longer be available.”

Despite taking inspiration from Wordle — the word guessing game that took the internet by storm — Heardle is still pretty unique, serving as a fun way to put your music knowledge to the test. The game gives you six tries to guess the name of a song as you listen to progressively longer snippets of the track.

If you don’t know the name right off the bat, you can continue listening until you can identify it. The sooner you’re able to guess the song, the better your score. Once you guess the song (or give up), Heardle gives you a link to listen to the track on Spotify.

“After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to say goodbye to Heardle as we focus our efforts on other features for music discovery,” Spotify spokesperson Brittney Le Roy said in an emailed statement to The Verge.

Spotify says you have until May 4th to screenshot your stats if you want to keep them as a memory of the short-lived game. When Spotify acquired Heardle last year, it said the game had millions of players — but perhaps fewer users are playing the game now that the hype surrounding The New York Times-owned Wordle has died off a bit.

Maybe its shutdown is also related to the fact that Spotify never integrated Heardle into its app. If Heardle was available at users’ fingertips instead of on a standalone website, maybe it would’ve continued to live on.

“Thanks for playing Heardle, but unfortunately we have to say goodbye,” the message reads. “From May 5th, Heardle will no longer be available.”

Despite taking inspiration from Wordle — the word guessing game that took the internet by storm — Heardle is still pretty unique, serving as a fun way to put your music knowledge to the test. The game gives you six tries to guess the name of a song as you listen to progressively longer snippets of the track.

If you don’t know the name right off the bat, you can continue listening until you can identify it. The sooner you’re able to guess the song, the better your score. Once you guess the song (or give up), Heardle gives you a link to listen to the track on Spotify.

“After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to say goodbye to Heardle as we focus our efforts on other features for music discovery,” Spotify spokesperson Brittney Le Roy said in an emailed statement to The Verge.

Spotify says you have until May 4th to screenshot your stats if you want to keep them as a memory of the short-lived game. When Spotify acquired Heardle last year, it said the game had millions of players — but perhaps fewer users are playing the game now that the hype surrounding The New York Times-owned Wordle has died off a bit.

Maybe its shutdown is also related to the fact that Spotify never integrated Heardle into its app. If Heardle was available at users’ fingertips instead of on a standalone website, maybe it would’ve continued to live on.