Today, I explain why Spotify has already erred since it acquired Heardle.
Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of pop culture history that interests me that doesn’t quite fit into the other features.
Way back in the olden times of February of this year, I wrote a bit about how I thought that it made perfect sense for the New York Times to purchase Wordle, but that the Times had better realize that they’re buying something people liked because of what it was, not as something that needed to be changed to fit into the Times’ setup.
And so far, the New York Times has kept Wordle as it is (I mean, sure, there have been some slight alterations, but SLIGHT alterations), and it remains to be very popular.
Well, Spotify has purchased the Wordle-inspired music game, Heardle (basically a modern online version of “Name That Tune”), and so far, it has handled it pretty much the opposite of how the Times handled Wordle. Spotify buying Heardle, by the way, makes perfect sense to me. I think it makes sense, but again, people like Heardle AS IS, so when you buy something like that, you have to stress how similar it is.
In other words, the link https://heardle.app should just automatically redirect to https://spotify.com/heardle instead of a screen saying that the link will expire soon and THEN a redirect. Just let it redirect, people will get to know the spotify.com/heardle address very soon and it won’t matter.
That’s not as big of a deal, though, as Spotify changing the way that sharing your score (one of the main things for games like Heardle) and you now have to download a third party app to share your score (many people also lost their stats, which is obviously also an issue). That’s just not cool, Spotify. I’m pretty darn confident that Spotify will fix these issues, but they shouldn’t have even BEEN an issue to start with, ya know? You have to make these things change over a lot smoother than this.
As they say, you only make one first impression.
EDTIED TO ADD: Like I figured, I trusted Spotify to fix the issues and they were all basically fixed by morning time, so that’s great. Good for them! Keep it up, Spotify! Still should have had it done AT launch, but by morning the day after is not bad!
Drop me a line at brian@popculturereferences.com if you have any other interesting bit about pop culture that you’d like me to discuss!
