Millions of music fans had a tough day on Thursday after Spotify went down for an unprecedented time, unable to connect users to their favorite songs and playlists. The music streaming service was hit by critical issues impacting users around the world, which lasted for several hours.
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What Happened During the Outage
The outages started around 2 p.m. ET, with users losing access to Gmail, Google Maps, Google Home, and Spotify. Downdetector reported more than 13,000 users had issues with Google Cloud, and more than 27,000 users reported issues with Spotify at the peak.
Image Source: Downdetector
Users had a variety of issues, including:
Songs freezing mid-play
Error messages loading the app
Logins failing to access accounts
The app crashing on mobile or desktop
Playlists failing to load
The problems weren’t just with Spotify. A cloud outage on Thursday forced services across the United States offline, as was the case for Spotify, Discord, Google Meet, and Twitch. The problem a technical issue with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Amazon Web Services (AWS), two of the most common cloud providers.
The Connection to Google Cloud Issues
A number of experts think Spotify’s issues were linked to a more extensive outage with Google’s cloud services. Alphabet’s Google reported that it addressed a short global outage on its platforms affecting multiple services including music streamer Spotify, services like Discord — which allows for instant text messaging.
Such a connection makes sense as many apps/services rely on cloud platforms, such as Google Cloud, for their proper functioning. If these cloud platforms have problems, it will also have knock-on effects for the apps and any services that utilized involves or integrated with Google Cloud.
Why Cloud Outages Affect So Many Services
Cloud services act as the hidden backbone of the Internet. In the absence of these services, it is the equivalent of losing power to an entire neighborhood, and everything suddenly stops working. This is what we saw with:
Spotify for music streaming
Discord for messaging
Google Meet for video conferencing
Other online services
How Long Did the Outage Last?
The major outage lasted approximately 3 hours, however some users continued experiencing interruptions for a few hours longer than that. Reports on Down Detector showed:
Peak issues around 2:15 p.m. ET with greater than 27,000 reports
Improvement in the subsequent hours
Some reports continued into the evening
Most services restored by late afternoon
Spotify’s Response to the Outage
Official Updates
Spotify has been slow to recognize the problems officially. The only official updates came from moderators on the company’s community forums who posted at some point in the day, indicating they were looking into issues with login, playback and the status of the support website. There was not much in terms of communication from Spotify’s main social media accounts during the peak of the issues.
What Spotify Recommended
Spotify would not verify an issue, the brand’s care account is replying to a handful of users, recommending that they restart the app if they were unable to use the service. This quick fix sped up reaccess to music for some users.
Quick Fixes That Helped Users
If you experienced issues during the outage, here are some methods that have worked for many users:
For Mobile Users:
Fully close out the Spotify app.
Wait 10-15 seconds.
Relaunch the Spotify app.
Log out and back into the app if needed.
For Desktop Users:
Close Spotify entirely from your computer.
End any task processes for Spotify from Task Manager.
Relaunch the application.
Verify your internet connection is working.
For All Users:
Clear the app cache if the problem continues to persist.
Ensure that you are on the latest version of Spotify.
Restart your device if nothing else works.
Current Status and Recovery
Good news for music fans, Spotify seems to be relatively back to normal for the majority of users. While there are still thousands of people who had a large outage issue, it has mostly been resolved. Most users might still be able to experience bugs here and there while the software stabilizes itself.
This was the reported timeline of the outage:
Major improvements began changing around 5 p.m. ET
The number of reported outages decreased from over 27,000, down to under 2,000
Most people are able to access music again
By the end of the evening, service was fully restored.
Problems like this don’t happen very often anymore. Companies like Spotify are trying to improve the systems they have, so Spotify is working more consistently.
The good news is that Spotify is functioning properly again. For most people, listening to their music works just fine now. Spotify also learned that when problems come up, they should communicate to their users better.
If Spotify does not work again, do the following these steps:
Close the app and open it again
Make sure your app is updated
Have another music app ready to use
Don’t worry – problems like this usually get fixed quickly.
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