Heardle may have begun as a lighthearted Wordle spinoff created by a UK computer engineer in his own time. However, it has already attracted the attention of millions of users, including Questlove and Spotify. Heardle fans have even made variations of the game that are focused on the discographies of Taylor Swift, BTS, and video games. 

Heardle, like Wordle, updates once every day and is considered as one of the most enjoyable games to stimulate players' minds. Heardle game starts when you play the first second of a song, then you have to identify the song's author and artist. You have five further chances to guess if you need more time to figure it out; otherwise, you lose and the answer is given to you. You can use some amusing emoticons created by the app to express the outcome of your day and brag about your awesome win or loss on social media. 

Effect of Heardle: How the Heardle Music App Impacts Music

Let's start with Heardle's release date of February 26, 2022.

The xx's “Intro”: Saturday, Feb. 26 

A natural increase in SoundCloud plays on the day Heardle showcases the tune serves as the initial indicator of interest. This is because Heardle plays its daily song selection through a hidden SoundCloud player, which is available to the technically savvy. From this point, we can probably gauge the strength of the player base that day, as was the case on February 26 when London band The xx had their epic “Intro” instrumental from 2009 selected.

When "Intro" had its Heardle debut, it essentially witnessed a 10x daily rise while only receiving 200–300 SoundCloud spins per day in February. Surprisingly, as a result of effect of Heardle:, the song failed to gain traction on other streaming services at the track level. However, at the artist level, The xx registered a six-fold rise in Spotify Monthly Listeners that day, bringing their total to 52K. They virtually returned to normal levels right away. While we are unsure of the music that was played that day, one thing is certain: They were not "Intro" tracks. That indicates that a significant portion of Spotify users either chose to listen to some of The xx's back catalog from their own libraries or they first learned about the band on Spotify as a result of Heardle. 

Tuesday, March 15: Blur's “Song 2”

The game launched Blur's classic rock song "Song 2" on March 15 as evidence that Heardle's reputation did indeed spread like wildfire. 

With 3.4M daily plays in March, "Song 2" was a major smash. By that Thursday, however, it had undoubtedly fallen down to 300-400 spins per day on SoundCloud That alone demonstrates Heartle's enormous success. It is worth noting that none of the streaming or social media platforms we were monitoring had a strong signal for the song or the band. 

Madonna's “Like A Virgin”: Thursday, March 17

On March 17, when the iconic synthesizer riff from ''Like A Virgin'' sounded, Madonna quickly attracted Heardle's attention. The SoundCloud spin count increased by 3M+, yet the Material Girl didn't get anything in terms of artist benefits.

Although only reaching 400+, "Like A Virgin" did have a 10x boost in Genius lyrics page visits, and a noticeable 63x daily rise in global Shazams to more than 38K. Even while they weren't strong signals, they did exhibit a behavior not previously seen in the first two tracks.