Heardle to shut down, less than a year after Spotify purchased it

Spotify has announced that it is to shut down music trivia game Heardle, less than a year after it purchased it.

In July of 2022, the streaming service announced that they had bought the game, which arrived as a Wordle spin-off that played fans the intro to well-known songs and asked them to identify the track as quickly as possible.

At the time, Spotify’s global head of music Jeremy Erlich said: “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.”

Now, the company have confirmed that they are shutting down the service, saying in a statement: “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.”

As Billboard report, the game is set to disappear on May 5, with fans being sent a push notification this week that read: “Thanks for playing Heardle, but unfortunately we have to say goodbye. From May 5th, Heardle will no longer be available.”

Elsewhere at Spotify, the company announced this week that it has also shut down its live audio app Spotify Live, with the company saying it “no longer makes sense as a standalone app”.

Spotify Live, which was previously called Spotify Greenroom and purchased (under the name Locker Room) by Spotify in 2021, allowed fans to stream and interact with live audio and podcasts.

Speaking to Music Ally this week, Spotify confirmed that they were shuttering the app, saying: “After a period of experimentation and learnings around how Spotify users interact with live audio, we’ve made the decision to sunset the Spotify Live app.