Fans of the music-streaming platform Spotify reported on Wednesday that they were unable to access music, podcasts and artist pages, due to a currently unknown technical issue.
Around 1:30pm, Downdetector showed over 8000 reports of ‘outages’ in the last hour. The website states that it reports an incident only when the “number of problem reports is significantly higher than the typical volume for that time of day”.
At 1.18pm, Spotify’s official Twitter account posted the message “Something’s not quite right, and we’re looking into it. Thanks for your reports!”
Half an hour later, Spotify appeared to indicate that the problem had been resolved, tweeting that “everything’s looking much better now. However, that does not appear to be the case at the time of writing.
Something’s not quite right, and we’re looking into it. Thanks for your reports!
— Spotify Status (@SpotifyStatus) April 19, 2023
Everything’s looking much better now! Give @SpotifyCares a shout if you still need help.
— Spotify Status (@SpotifyStatus) April 19, 2023
Users of the streaming service are still reporting glitches on the Spotify app, including selected songs not playing, tracks randomly skipping - an issue we noticed on the Android app - and playback and loading issues on other platforms including the web, desktop, smart speakers and PS5.
“I can’t play any songs... it just skips through everything on a playlist or just straight up doesn’t play as a single. It shows up as playing on Discord for some reason even though it isn’t,” tweeted one Spotify user.
Others complained about being cut off from their favourite playlists and tracks during their commutes, or while doing household chores. Some made light of the issue by claiming to be users of music streaming services that were still working, like Apple Music.
I can't play any songs... it just skips through everything on a playlist or just straight up doesn't play as a single. It shows up as playing on Discord for some reason even though it isn't.
— S.L. (@astroevrafter) April 19, 2023
@SpotifyUK is Spotify down? My songs are randomly skipping themselves then will play a song and skip the next ones too. It’s also saying I need to import songs..? It’s happening in both my phone and laptop and Alexa pic.twitter.com/mQ8uPhNGg1
— Sharky🪬 (@w0rmfrog) April 19, 2023
Spotify is apparently down Worldwide, but Apple Music isn’t. pic.twitter.com/rvyv6imBXp
— Ditty aka Mr. B.O.P🗽🇭🇹 (@Dittyville_) April 19, 2023
What to do when Spotify is not playing?
Spotify is instructing some users to delete and reinstall the mobile app in order to fix the problem. Doing so can apparently “fix common technical issues and ensure your app’s up-to-date,” according to the company’s official help page. Meanwhile, Spotify is instructing web users to clear their web browser’s cache.
The Spotify help page also recommends restarting or updating the app, updating your device’s operating system and closing any other apps you aren’t using.
Last year, Spotify topped DownDetector’s list of biggest crashes of 2022. The platform suffered an outage for around two hours earlier in March that was reported by 2.9 million DownDetector users.
Spotify also briefly went down twice in January of this year, according to its official status account on Twitter.
