Spotify said over the weekend it was dropping Heardle, a name-that-tune-style game inspired by Wordle, less than a year after acquiring it.
Spotify bought the interactive game, which plays a short clip of music that the player wants to identify as quickly as possible, in July 2022. Spotify’s idea: after the game reveals the song, the full song plays on the app.
“After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to say goodbye to Heardle,” Spotify said Saturday in a statement. The music streaming company had said it wanted to use Heardle as “a tool for musical discovery,” but said it was shifting focus to “other features for music discovery.”
Spotify recently rolled out several new features, including an “AI DJ” that learns what users like to listen to and discovery feeds modeled after TikTok’s “For You” page.
According to TechCrunch, the number of daily Heardle players dropped precipitously after Spotify bought the game. Users cited several complaints, including statistics not carrying over to the new platform and interface issues.
A message from Spotify announcing that Heardle is “going away” now appears before the daily edition of the game.
“Thanks for playing Heardle, but unfortunately we have to say goodbye. From May 5th, Heardle will no longer be available,” the message reads.
“If you have stats that you would like to save, make sure you go to your stats and take a screenshot by May 4th. It won’t be possible to access them after May 4th.”
The decision to drop Heardle comes several months after Spotify canceled several special podcasts and “call-in” shows that debuted on its Live app. The company shut down Spotify Live entirely earlier this month.