On April 16, 2025, Spotify went through a worldwide outage that prevented millions of users from accessing music and podcasts for almost six hours until the business fixed the problems, proving that rumors of a security breach were untrue.
Spike In Downdetector Reports
Over 48,000 Spotify users in the US alone reported issues during the peak of the outage, according to Downdetector, a company that monitors service interruptions. According to some sources, the surge in reports started around 6:20 AM EDT (or 8:45 AM ET) and peaked before 10 AM ET. The disruption’s genuinely worldwide scope was confirmed by the monitoring service’s heat map, which displayed clusters of problems focused in key cities like New York, London, Madrid, and Jakarta.
Although users reported a range of issues on several platforms, most of them were exclusive to the Spotify mobile app. Playback problems, playlists not loading, songs pausing after a few seconds, the app not launching correctly, and total inaccessibility to material were among the most frequent grievances. Similar issues were noticed by desktop users, many of whom tried to launch the application but were met with blank black displays.
Affected Users: 675 Million
A large percentage of Spotify’s enormous user base—which currently numbers over 675 million worldwide, including 263 million paying customers in more than 180 markets—had their service interrupted by the outage. Although not all users experienced the disturbance at the same time, at 9:30 a.m. ET, there were about 48,000 reports on Downdetector at its height.
During the downtime, users encountered a range of problems; 79% of them reported issues with the mobile app, 12% with the website, and the remaining 79% with server problems. Many had trouble loading the desktop site or app, while others had trouble accessing playlists, playing or hearing music, or using search features. Based on industry standards for major company downtime charges, the anticipated financial impact of the approximately 43-minute disturbance is $387,000.
The 6-Hour Service Outage On Spotify
According to Downdetector, the outage, which started at roughly 6:20 a.m. EDT on April 16, 2025, affected over 48,000 customers at its height. Users from all around the world had a variety of problems on different platforms; the desktop, web player, and mobile app versions all showed error warnings or did not load correctly. At 8:45 a.m. ET, Spotify posted an acknowledgement on social media that they were “aware of some issues” and were looking into the matter.
Users were only able to access previously downloaded content during the outage; streaming, search, and playlist access were not available. Online rumors of a security compromise were strongly refuted by the company. Spotify posted “All clear – thanks for your patience” on their status account at 11:45 a.m. EDT to signal that regular service had been restored. After the primary service was restored, some customers still had minor problems uploading images, and Spotify suggested that they restart their app.