Spotify is down - it's not just you [Update: It's back]

By Chris Davies/

Spotify is experiencing widespread issues this morning, with songs either playing for only a few seconds or not at all, as the company confirms it's looking into the problem. Issues with the streaming music service began at roughly 8am ET this morning, with Spotify users repeatedly coming up against the "Something went wrong" notification as they tried to use the app.

"We're aware of some issues right now and are checking them out!" the official SpotifyCares support Twitter account confirmed. "We'll keep you posted."

From our own tests, it appears that any attempt to search for tracks fails, with Spotify warning that it cannot load the page. Attempts to stream music also fails: tracks either play for a couple of seconds and then stop, or they do not play at all. While it's possible to view Spotify playlists, actually getting them to play is impossible.

The exception is locally-downloaded music. If you've set a playlist to offline, where Spotify keeps a cache of the tracks on your smartphone or other device, those songs will still seemingly work. Attempts to download new playlists for offline playback are not currently working, however.

It's a reminder of just how precarious relying on streaming providers for your musical needs can be, versus having copies of your tracks. Though Spotify – and other streaming services like Apple Music, Tidal, and others – have opened the way to a single subscription fee covering full access to their catalogs, that's only useful if you can actually load that catalog.

Spotify uses Google Cloud for its hosting, and indeed is called out as a case study by the storage service. Currently there's no indication of Google Cloud downtime on the company's own service status page.

This isn't Spotify's first widespread downtime of the year, mind. Back in July, the company's app was caught up in a Facebook login error which left multiple services repeatedly crashing upon opening. A similar issue caused headaches for Spotify users, among others, in May 2020 as well.

Update: Roughly 90 minutes after the issue began, Spotify says that it should be working properly again.

Recommended