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Spotify Dropping Heardle – Have Spotify Stepped Away from Gaming for Good?

Heardle is a viral music game you could play on the digital music, podcast, and video streaming service website Spotify. The game could be accessed either instantly in your web browser on the official Spotify website or from within the Spotify mobile application. 

The aim of the game is to try and guess the name of the song and which singer/songwriter or band performed that song by hearing just snippets of the track. It’s really easy to play, but it helps to have good music knowledge to be more successful. 

It has been described as an interactive Wordle-like music game, and Spotify recently discontinued the game after just over a year after originally purchasing it for an undisclosed sum. Let’s take a closer look at why that might be right here. 

Why did Spotify get rid of Heardle?

The main reason why Spotify decided to call it a day on the Heardle viral music game was that the audio streaming giant plans to focus more on music discovery through recent changes to the application instead of via Wordle-inspired gameplay off-platform. 

In short, Heardle, and gaming in general, was simply not a part of Spotify’s bigger picture in the direction the company would be taking. That’s not to say the game wasn’t popular, even at the time it was discontinued. 

However, in the months leading up to them scrapping the game for good, the number of players regularly playing the game steadily declined. The company also didn’t want to continue with the ongoing maintenance of hosting the game. 

It was the only game the company tried, and many people who played Heardle enjoyed playing it. There were never any plans to bring in more social, mini, casual, casino, Indie, puzzle, or music-themed games. 

People who subscribe to Spotify do so to listen to music, not play games. The Heardle game is still about, just not on the Spotify website. 

Apart from music, what else can I listen to on Spotify?

Spotify continues to diversify, and to some people’s surprise, you can do more than just listen to music from your favourite artists. You can also do the following:

  • Listen to audiobooks – examples include The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Ernest Hemingway, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and George Orwell’s 1984
  • Learn new languages – popular options include Korean, Japanese, German, Polish, and Spanish
  • Listen to historical speeches – from major political and royal figures over the past one hundred years
  • Download content – short stories, poetry being read, NASA missions, radio dramas, and more
  • Stream/download meditation music (ambient and relaxing sounds of nature, wildlife, the ocean, etc.)
  • Listen to modern and classic stand-up comedy shows – David Spade, Amy Schumer, Robin Williams, Kevin Hart, and others

Are there any good alternatives to Spotify?

If you feel as though you have got everything you need out of Spotify and want to try somewhere else for a change, the good news is that there are a few reliable audio streaming website alternatives that are similar to Spotify and worth checking out. 

They include Amazon Music Prime, Amazon Music Free, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, Pandora, Tidal, Bandcamp, and Qobuz, to name just a handful.