Spotify announced today they plan to acquire the music trivia game Heardle. If you’re not already familiar, Heardle is a song-guessing game where users hear the first second of a song intro and must guess the song’s name. Players get six guesses, unlocking another second of the intro after each guess. The objective is to figure out what song it is in under six attempts.
Every day, there’s a new song to figure out, and the player can listen to the full thing on Spotify after each puzzle. Spotify sees Heardle as a gamified entry point into the popular music streaming app, and it’s a popular one at that, with about 50 million unique users per month, according to website traffic analysis service SimilarWeb.
Heardle was built off the hype surrounding Josh Wardle’s popular Wordle game format. Wordle went on to be acquired by the New York Times for an undisclosed sum. Since then, hundreds of games like Wordle have popped up all over the internet, some gaining massive popularity, like Heardle.
Jeremy Elrich, Global Head of Music at Spotify, says, “Heardle has proven to be a really fun way to connect millions of fans with songs they know and love and with new songs… and a way to compete with their friends as to who has the best musical knowledge. Since its debut, the game has quickly built a loyal following, and it aligns with our plans to deepen interactivity across the Spotify ecosystem.”
So, what’s changing with Heardle after the acquisition? Nothing much, according to Spotify. It will have the same look and feel as always, but players can now listen to the full songs on Spotify at the end of the game. The listening part was already possible with some songs, but in some cases, songs were embedded from Soundcloud.
Heardle will remain free-to-play, and Spotify plans to integrate the game and other experiences “more fully into Spotify to allow music lovers to connect more deeply with artists and challenge friends.”
Who made Heardle?
According to ProductHunt, Heardle is the brainchild of a single London-based product design freelancer, Glenn Angelo, who runs a digital product studio called Studio Omakase.
If you ever need answers for Heardle, we’ve got you covered. In fact, we’ve been covering the game since it was released, and it’s one of our favorite daily trivia games.
