If you dare to remember the early days of Covid, a positive thing was the small excitement of opening Heardle to test your music knowledge. You listened to a few seconds of the daily song and tried to guess it right with only a handful of tries.
The format was simple: once per day, one song. You heard the first second, guessed, and if you were wrong, the clip got a little longer, up to six tries before the full track played and revealed the answer. It borrowed Wordle’s “one puzzle a day” structure and applied it to music.
So what happened to Heardle? Spotify bought it in 2022, and less than a year later, they shut it down again.
Why Spotify shut it down
Spotify’s official statement was that they wanted to “focus our efforts on other features for music discovery.” In practice, that likely meant Heardle wasn’t bringing people back into the main Spotify app. You would open Heardle, play one round and close the tab.
For a company whose business is built on listening minutes, a standalone game on their website which was only played once a day, hadn’t produced the boost in engagement Spotify was hoping for.
In my opinion, if done right, it could push engagements and Spotify is missing an opportunity for this specific niche of music quiz apps. Name-that-tune style formats were popular since the 1970s in classic television shows in many countries and even today similar formats on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram channels have a steady audience.
The Websites that followed
Since Heardle disappeared, a number of similar websites showed up, offering the same format. Many of them still use the Spotify Web API to play the songs. Spotify’s own Developer Policy doesn’t allow this, though. Section III, “Some prohibited applications” states it plainly:
“Do not create a game, including trivia quizzes.”
That’s item two on Spotify’s own list of things developers may not build with their API. It’s also likely why most of these projects only exist as websites rather than apps in the App Store as submitting an app means complying with guidelines and going through a review process. Staying as a website is one way these projects can keep going for a while without that scrutiny.
These sites can be fun to try, but it’s not quite the same feeling as the original. Many of them are side projects, so there’s also a chance they disappear again at some point.
BopQuiz: Finally a worthy Heardle alternative for Apple Music
BopQuiz uses the Apple Music API instead, and their terms allow building games with it. Download the app for free and play your own library and any playlist.
The Bople (wow, I know) mode starts with 1 second and goes up to 3.8s. Answering works a bit different: Heardle had you search for the song title, while BopQuiz gives you four multiple choice answers, so it’s a little faster.
A daily challenge for your own library is in the app of course. But you can also play the Bople mode in any playlist and compete in international leaderboards or play a time-shifted duel with a friend or stranger.
Getting Started
BopQuiz is available for iPhone and iPad, and requires an active Apple Music subscription to listen to the songs. It’s a banger, don’t miss it!
To make sure Apple is fine with it, BopQuiz tries to add value to Apple’s ecosystem. (Discover and add new music, relisten to old songs, listen to songs while the game is played and more.) Maybe take it as proof that the app is for music lovers, anti profit-maxxing and will stay a while to play the long game.
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