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What Hi-Fi?
What Hi-Fi?
Technology
Joe Cox

Spotify is down for users around the world – but a fix is on the way

Spotify.

Panic on the streets of London... Spotify is down now for many users around the world.

Spotify has confirmed there is a problem, saying: "We’re aware of some issues right now and are checking them out!"

The issues began around 1pm BST / 6pm EDT and have continued for two hours at the time of writing.

As of around 3pm BST, Spotify confirmed a fix is being rolled out, so watch this space...

(Image credit: Future)

The details

Spotify is down for many users around the world

Spotify has confirmed there is an issue – but a fix is being rolled out

At the time of writing, the service still isn't working for everyone

Down Detector confirms a spike in users reporting issues with Spotify, and we certainly can confirm it's not working properly for us either.

(Image credit: Future)

The reports on Down Detector, a website popular for reporting issues, began to appear around 8am ET / 1pm BST, with reports from the US and UK.

The Spotify website is currently giving us an error message, and searching for music in the Spotify app also isn't working. So that's not good...

Are you seeing issues? Let us know in the comments below.

Spotify users are currently being greeted by the three dots of doom. Loading...

(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Tidal)

We don't want to be mean, but perhaps now is a great time to check out another streaming service?

As we said in our Spotify review, being the biggest and most popular service brings with it many benefits but in our opinion, it's no longer the best music streaming service.

We recommend Tidal and Apple Music, both of which offer better sound quality alongside comprehensive music libraries and various other features. And, at the time of writing, they're also actually working...

A Reddit post confirms plenty of people around the world are experiencing issues.

The now deleted post saw users from UK, US, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, France and... pretty much everywhere else, confirming they were having no joy with streaming music.

However, some users did report that they could still access and play tracks that they had downloaded for offline playback.

Our friends at TechRadar have confirmed that a fix is on the way.

A Spotify spokesperson told them, "The issue with Search has been addressed and an update has begun rolling out to all users."

But... neither the web app or the desktop app is currently working for me.

Now is a great time to own some physical media.

Sure, it doesn't happen very often, but this is the obvious downside of relying on a streaming service for your listening pleasure.

You can read our staff writer, Harry McKerrell, on this very subject, as he considers the pros and cons of streaming vs CD and vinyl.

For now, Spotify search and playback are still not working, which is making this a pretty big outage for such a big company.

We're hearing mixed reports about Spotify access. Some people are reporting be able to use it, others access to some parts of it and some, like everyone at What Hi-Fi?, none of it. Let us know if you're able to use it in the comments on this page, or our social media channels. We'll send you extra good karma if you say the region you're accessing it from and type of device.

(Image credit: Future)

The Spotify outage continues.

It's been so long - OK, only a few hours but still – that Spotify has had to issue another update.

A post on X reads, "We are aware of the outage and working to resolve it as soon as possible. The reports of this being a security hack are false."

So, it wasn't a hack but whatever the problem was, we still don't have a working Spotify.

Spotify users are gradually reporting the service coming back online. Subscribers among the What Hi-Fi? team can confirm it is back online for them too. A colleague in the US has similarly reported being able to once again access Spotify. Which means, if you can't access it still, service will hopefully resume shortly. We'll keep manning this live blog until we get official word from Spotify either way.

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