Spotify acquires the Wordle of music, Heardle
There’s been a certain business to guessing games in recent months. No, we’re not talking about the metaphorical ones that hang ominously over our daily lives. We’re talking about actual games you can play, likeWordlewhich was bought up by The New York Times earlier this year. Now, it seems Spotify wants to join in on this business as well.
The Sweden-based streaming platformhas acquired Heardle (viaThe Verge) from its anonymous British developer for an undisclosed sum of money. The company says it’ll push the game to users as a music discovery tool and that it is working to localize Heardle for different languages. Players in the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are currently able to play for free.
The game itself involves guessing the name of a song based off of increasing portions of the introduction for every wrong answer. As with Wordle, Heardle allows players six chances. Previously, the game used SoundCloud as its musical database. Obviously, with the buyout, Spotify now becomes the source.
In an interview with Variety, Heardle’s creator said that the project came out of having nothing to do after being laid off from a failed startup late last year and having his friends goad him into creating the Wordle spin-off he had come up with. He also said that the March 15th edition of Heardle had racked up over 1.75 million views.
In this case, Spotify is in a position to spread the game far and wide with its monthly active user base of 422 million. Heardle is likely to become part of the app’s daily programming along with its countless mix of music/podcast hybrid playlists. Of course, if the developers were really to get creative about it, this year’sWrappedcould be just a series of personalized Heardles.
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