Spotify closes Heardle, a music guessing game he purchased inspired by Wordle last July for an undisclosed amount. Like wordle, hurdle offers players six attempts to guess a popular song – but instead of entering different letters to form words, players listen to the song’s intro to guess the artist and title. At the time of the acquisition, Spotify stated that Heardle would remain free for everyone. The company now says it will hear the sunset on May 5 as it seeks to focus on its other music discovery goals.

Changes are communicated via an in-app message on the Heardle website.

We understand that the decision to shut down Heardle was made because Spotify wants to devote more of its energy to finding music through recent in-app changes rather than Wordle-inspired gameplay off the platform.

last month, Spotify redesigned from its mobile app, which introduced new TikTok-style music and podcast discovery channels, as well as other features such as Smart Shuffle for playlist recommendations and a new option to automatically play podcasts, among others. Rolled out too on “I DJ” which finds out what kind of music users like and then plays those tracks for you. This feature also gets smarter over time the more you interact with it.

In light of these updates, Hurdle was no longer involved in Spotify’s overall music discovery efforts. Also, like many tech companies that have been subject to belt-tightening measures such as layoffs In recent months, there has been less financial incentive to participate in side projects, including, for example, a fun musical game.

However, at the time of the acquisition, Heardle was still quite popular. In March 2022, the game peaked at 69 million visits per month on desktop and mobile, according to analytics firm Similarweb. Shortly before the Spotify deal, those visits dropped to 41 million. They may have continued to decline, which is why Hurdle’s ongoing maintenance is no longer a safe bet.

In addition, with most Wordle craze is also on the decline After The New York Times bought the flagship word game last January, Hurdle’s own future prospects may have dimmed as well. We understand that Heardle has retained some of its loyal users since the deal closed, but Spotify will not comment on overall usage or repeat interactions with any specific metrics. However, it wasn’t until Spotify learned how Heardle players interacted with the game that the decision was made to focus the company’s investment elsewhere.

In the game, after users guessed the song, they could press a button to listen to the full track on Spotify. Perhaps not enough users did this, but simply left the game to play again later.

In other words, Hurdle ultimately didn’t help Spotify achieve its goals of improving music discovery. And with the redesign, much of what Heardle had to offer was now duplicating the company’s other music search features — and doing so outside of the Spotify app.

However, for those who enjoyed playing Heardle, today’s announcement that the game will soon be closed is hardly welcome news. Except, perhaps, those Forbes participants who had to write down daily answers and prompts, as well as numerous sites that ran Hurdle clones.

Spotify confirmed the closure of the game with a statement.

“After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to say goodbye to Heardle as we focus our efforts on other music discovery features,” a company spokesperson told TechCrunch.

The website will display a banner for users to warn them of the shutdown, which will occur on May 5th.

We understand that Heardle did not have a dedicated team, so this will not affect either the reduction in staff or the reorganization.

We’re told that while Spotify is moving away from Heardle, that doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning other kinds of interactive experiences. Today, the company offers an interactive AI DJ feature and other features such as polls and Q&A that allow podcast listeners to interact with their favorite creators. It will also continue to invest in other gaming projects such as Roblox’s Spotify island, in-app gaming hub, and other Xbox and PlayStation integrations.

Earlier this month, Spotify also shut down another spin-off project with close Spotify Livelive streaming app and competitor to Clubhouse.

LOS ANGELES — Love is impatient, love is not kind – at least if you ask fans of Netflix’s Love Is Blind. Viewers had to wait over an hour to watch the Season 4 reunion special streaming live on Sunday, the second ever Netflix event to be live on its own platform.

Hosted by Vanessa and Nick Lachey, “Love Is Blind: The Live Reunion” was scheduled to air from Los Angeles starting at 5:00 pm PT. Netflix subscribers were able to join the show’s waiting room 10 minutes before the start, while those who did were still there an hour later. The show finally began streaming – seemingly live – around 6:16 p.m. PT, although some Netflix users still reported difficulty accessing the content.

“We are very sorry that we were late,” said Vanessa Lachey, the only confirmation of the delay at the start of the broadcast.

“To everyone who’s been up late, up early, forfeited their Sunday afternoon… we’re incredibly sorry the Love is Blind Live reunion didn’t work out as we planned,” Netflix wrote at 6:29 pm PT. “We are filming it now and it will be on Netflix as soon as possible. Thanks again and sorry.”

A request for comment from Netflix was not immediately returned. Netflix’s first live stream of “Chris Rock: Selective Outrage” had no apparent technical issues.

On Twitter, Netflix acknowledged the delay without providing an explanation. Two minutes after the original start time, it was promised that the special would begin in 15 minutes. Seven minutes later, the company tweeted, “The promise of #LoveIsBlindLIVE is worth the wait…” along with an image of one of the season’s “villains”.

The latest activity on the account was a retweet by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joking about the delay. With the special event’s original end time approaching, nothing has been released since then – and that’s how it has remained, even as the show began airing for some, until the apology tweet.

Before the show finally aired, Vanessa Lachey took to Instagram – briefly, perhaps ironically – from the set to try and convince viewers to stay, pointing out that the delay was a technical issue in a post in which she thanked fans for patience and signed: “Apparently, we broke the Internet!”

“It’s 2023,” she said.

The cast from the Seattle season also took to the social media platform to joke about the delay. Marshall Gleizes posted a photo of a man examining a lot of wires: “I’m trying, y’all,” he tweeted.

Rival streamers and networks have not been left out of this drama either.

“We would never keep you waiting for a reunion,” wrote BravoTV – home of many chaotic reunion specials – with a wink on his face.

“Hmm,” read a screenshot of Kerry Washington posted by Hulu on Twitter.

While chaos dominated popular Twitter threads, the end of the hour brought a major threat to Netflix’s dominance of the discourse: The latest episode of HBO’s “Legacy” was now streaming.

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Associated Press journalists Beatrice Dupuis, Alicia Rancilio and Mallika Sen contributed to this report.

BAE Systems has signed a strategic agreement with Microsoft and is using the software giant’s public cloud platform Azure to deliver new capabilities to various defense organizations.

The defense contractor said the contract with Microsoft is ultimately intended to reduce the time it takes to develop, deploy and manage digital defense capabilities using the Azure cloud, allowing BAE Systems to better use the data it receives during military operations to create new products. for clients.

As part of this work, the organization will use Azure for data analytics and modeling, and to enhance the digital design capabilities of BAE Systems by using data to digitally connect the design, manufacture, and operation of products throughout their lifecycle.

Through the collaboration, the pair have already worked on projects to improve the Royal Navy’s access to dynamic data sources to provide real-time tactical naval intelligence, and to develop secure software that can deliver updates to aerial platforms while in flight.

“Air, land and sea platforms face ever-changing threats, so their digital systems need to be regularly updated to recognize and counter them,” the two companies said in a joint statement.

“Modern fighter jets, for example, can require up to 24 million lines of code to operate effectively, so using the cloud to deploy updates can speed up the process and help maintain a competitive advantage over adversaries.”

The collaboration is also underpinned by the desire of both parties to jointly develop technologies using open architecture tools so that BAE Systems’ customers can easily integrate their proposals with other third-party technologies.

“This could help BAE Systems collaborate with small businesses and partners without sacrificing security by only allowing access to very specific areas of work. Taking this approach makes it easier for smaller companies to meet stringent security standards,” the joint statement said.

Julian Cracknell, director of technology and information at BAE Systems, said: “The data available to the defense sector and the military is often very complex and comes from hundreds of thousands of sources, whether satellite and radar data, intelligence collected by ships at sea or even social networks.

“Our groundbreaking agreement with Microsoft will give us easier access to tools to help us understand this information for our clients, allowing the military to stay ahead of rapidly changing threats while maintaining the highest levels of security.”

Claire Barclay, CEO of Microsoft UK, said the collaboration between the two parties is already “delivering tangible results” for BAE Systems customers.

“This strategic agreement will enable defense organizations to use data more effectively. This will help them ensure the stability and security of residents, countries and multinational alliances… working together to create flexible, secure and reliable software.”