Spotify experienced a major service disruption that generated thousands of outage reports per minute, with users across multiple countries reporting problems accessing key features on the music-streaming platform.
According to Forbes, reports began climbing around 9:45 a.m. EDT and reached their peak at approximately 10:41 a.m. Luke Kehoe, Ookla’s lead analyst and head of Downdetector, told the publication that reports surged to nearly 3,000 submissions per minute at the height of the outage, compared with roughly two per minute on a typical day.
About an hour later, the number had dropped to around 2,300 reports per minute. By 11:15 a.m. EDT, more than 100,000 reports had been submitted from the United States, with complaints recorded across 173 countries.
Mobile users were hit hardest
Forbes reported that mobile app problems accounted for approximately 58% of complaints by 11:15 a.m. EDT. Audio streaming issues represented another 21%.
The disruption appeared to primarily affect Spotify’s iOS and Android apps. Users were generally still able to access the service through web browsers and desktop applications, according to TechRadar.
Some users told 9to5Mac that they were met with a “something went wrong” message when attempting to search for music or access playlists that were not stored locally. Playback for people who were already logged in appeared to be among the less affected functions, although Spotify Connect and other features also experienced problems.
Users warned not to sign out
TechRadar advised affected mobile users against signing out of the Spotify app. Doing so could leave users unable to log back in while authentication problems remain.
Deleting and reinstalling the app also appeared to offer little relief, with TechRadar suggesting that a problematic update could be responsible for the disruption. Spotify’s SpotifyCares support account on X advised users to keep automatic updates enabled so they can receive a fix when one becomes available.
Spotify acknowledged the problem on its official status page, saying it was aware of “some issues” and was investigating. At the time, however, the company had not disclosed what caused the outage or provided an estimated recovery time.
Spotify directed users to its Spotify Status account on X for further updates.
