Spotify buys Wordle-style music guessing game Heardle

In a move similar to the New York Times’ acquisition of WordleIn January 2017, Spotify, the audio streaming company bought an music-guessing game Heardle For an undisclosed amount

Heardle has already been rebranded and now runs using Spotify rather than Soundcloud, but otherwise the playing experience remains the same — and it’s still free for all players. The change has however resulted in a decrease in users. HeardleThis has been removed from all English-speaking countries except for a handful of them: Australia, Canada, Ireland and the U.K.

Spotify released a statement indicating that they plan to make the game more widely available. “Today, we’re starting with users in the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. And soon, hundreds of millions more people around the world will have the opportunity to play and enjoy the game in their native language,” the company said.

In addition, if you head to Twitter, you’ll find some players complaining that their scores, streaks, and stats have not carried over to the new version of the game.

Heardle Six chances to guess a song starting from the intro. Start with a 1-second clip and continue it. You might like WordleIt offers one challenge per day.

Spotify wants to buy it. “We see Heardle as more than a trivia game: It’s also a tool for musical discovery,” reads Spotify’s statement, which suggests the streaming company is interested in any avenues for increasing engagement with music in its enormous audience — and is also looking for reasons for people to share links to songs on Spotify on social media.

Spotify Integration means Heardle players can now listen to the song in its entirety at the end of each day’s game, whether they guessed it or not.

“Further down the road, we are also planning to integrate Heardle and other interactive experiences more fully into Spotify to allow music lovers to connect more deeply with artists and challenge friends — and have some fun in the process,” Spotify said.

Netflix is pushing into video games, and it appears that another media company has begun to look at interactivity and games as a way to keep its subscribers hooked to the service.