Music streaming giant Spotify suffered a massive outage on Tuesday (May 12) that left thousands of users across the United States unable to stream music, log in or load the app properly.
The outage quickly sparked a flood of complaints on social media and outage monitoring platforms, making “Spotify down” one of the most followed tech topics of the day.
Thousands of people are reporting Spotify outages
According to the outage monitoring platform Downdetector, reports of problems increased rapidly during the afternoon, with more than 13,000 to 15,000 complaints during the peak of the disruption.
Later in the day, outage figures exceeded 22,000 user reports as service issues continued to affect listeners in various regions.
Users have reported several serious issues, including:
-Error messages preventing content from loading
Many users have reported that the app freezes on launch or fails to restore playlists and podcasts.
The mobile app seems to be the worst hit
Downdetector data indicated that the majority of complaints were related to Spotify’s mobile app.
The reported issues were related to mobile app crashes, while the remaining complaints were related to streaming interruptions and account login issues.
The scope of the outage indicated a broader backend breach affecting several of Spotify’s core services simultaneously.
Spotify confirms service issues
Spotify acknowledged the outage shortly after complaints began circulating online.
“We are aware of some issues with the app right now and are looking into them!” the company posted on social networks.
However, Spotify did not immediately provide a detailed explanation for the outage or specify when services would return to normal.
No timetable for full restoration has been announced.
The outage coincides with the anniversary of Spotify’s launch
The outage comes on the same day that Spotify launched a new personalized feature called “Spotify 20: Your Party of the Year(s).
This feature allows users to revisit their music listening history through a customized retrospective experience available on the Spotify mobile app.
Users can access this feature by searching for “Spotify 20” or “Party of the Year” in the app or via the Spotify mobile website.
What is Spotify?
Spotify is one of the world’s largest music and audio streaming platforms, used by hundreds of millions of people around the world to listen to songs, podcasts, audiobooks and curated playlists on mobile phones, computers, smart TVs, game consoles and connected devices.
Founded in 2006 in Stockholm, Sweden, Spotify has changed the way people consume music by offering instant online streaming instead of users having to buy or download songs individually.
Today, the platform has become a dominant force in the global music industry and a key destination for artists, podcasters and listeners worldwide.
Strong influence on artists and music charts
Spotify has become deeply influential in shaping music trends and chart performance.
Spotify streaming numbers now play a major role in:
-Record marketing strategies
Many emerging artists have built careers after songs gained traction through Spotify playlists or viral referral systems.
