A Heardle alternative that still works
Heardle closed on 5 May 2023. BLIP is a free daily song guessing game built on the same idea: five songs a day, the same five for everyone, and the clip grows only when you miss.
Play today's five See the other modes
What happened to Heardle
Heardle was an independent game that asked you to name a song from one second of its intro, adding a little more audio with each wrong guess. Spotify bought it in July 2022 and announced in April 2023 that it was closing, saying it wanted to focus on other ways of helping people discover music. The game went offline on 5 May 2023 and the official version has not come back.
BLIP is not affiliated with Heardle or with Spotify, and is not a copy of either. Heardle is named here only to describe the kind of game this is.
How BLIP is different
The format is familiar, but the thing being tested is not quite the same. Heardle started you with a full second. BLIP starts with a tenth of one, which is short enough that you are recognising a texture rather than a melody.
| Heardle | BLIP | |
|---|---|---|
| First clip | 1 second | 0.1 seconds |
| On a miss | Restarts, longer | Carries on from where it stopped |
| Songs per day | One | Five, one from each difficulty tier |
| Your own music | No | Import a Spotify, Apple Music or SoundCloud playlist |
| Against a friend | No | Share a four letter code and race on identical clips |
| Account | Not required | Not required |
How the daily works
- Five songs, easiest to hardest, the same five for everybody that day.
- Each round opens with 100 milliseconds. Miss and the clip does not restart, it continues from exactly where it stopped, adding 400ms, then 1.5s, then 6s, then 7s.
- The sooner you name it, the more the round is worth.
- It resets at midnight UTC, and finishing starts a streak.
- You can share your result as a grid of squares without spoiling the answers.
Other ways to play
- Your own playlist: paste a public Spotify, Apple Music or SoundCloud link and every round comes out of your own tracks. No account needed to import one.
- Solo: pick a difficulty and keep going, from songs everyone knows down to buried album tracks.
- Gauntlet: one song from each tier, easiest first. A single miss restarts the run.
- Versus: put a four letter code in front of someone and race them through identical clips.
Questions
Is Heardle coming back?
The official one has not returned since Spotify closed it in May 2023, and Spotify has not said it intends to bring it back.
Is BLIP free?
Yes. It is a non-commercial hobby project with no advertising, no payments and no donations, and it does not require an account to play any mode.
Where does the audio come from?
Deezer's public 30 second previews, streamed from Deezer's own servers. BLIP hosts no audio of its own.
Do I need a Spotify account to use my playlist?
No, and there is nothing to connect. The importer reads a public playlist page for track names and artists, then matches them to previews. Anything with no matching preview is reported and skipped.
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