Why Spotify bought a music trivia game

Imitation is the highest form of flattery and, sometimes, it’s lucrative.

Spotify acquired Heardle, an online game that challenges players to guess a song in 16 seconds or less, for an unknown sum. The game will remain free and players can listen to each day’s full song on Spotify.

Spotify says it sees Heardle as a music discovery tool, and plans to incorporate more “interactive experiences” into its platform in the future.

And it’s probably a solid move

“Wrapped,” Spotify’s interactive year-in-review of each user’s most popular streams, boosted app downloads by 21% in December 2020.

And Heardle is popular, reaching a record 69m visitors in March, per TechCrunch.

But there’s no Heardle without Wordle

Heardle is an obvious derivative of Wordle, the word puzzle that The New York Times acquired for a “low seven figures” in January.

• In a company earnings call, NYT CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said, “Wordle brought an unprecedented tens of millions of new users to The Times” in a quarter that saw 387k new digital subs.

And for other companies seeking to draw users with games, there’s no shortage of Wordle copycats out there.

IMDb could acquire Framed, the game where you guess the movie in six stills or fewer. Maybe Airbnb could pick up the geography game Worldle. Perhaps Pornhub wants Lewdle (no explanation necessary).

Truly, the possibilities are endless!

BTW: Want more puzzles? Here ya go.