Spotify still down after over an hour — fans spiral as music app outage continues

On April 16, 2025, a major service disruption affected Spotify users worldwide. According to Downdetector, reports of outages spiked at around 6:20 a.m. ET, reaching a peak of over 48,000 complaints by 9:30 a.m. ET.

The issue prevented its users from streaming music, loading artist profiles, or searching their libraries. Signed-out users only had access to downloaded content, leaving many of the platform’s 600+ million subscribers in the dark.

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Spotify responds, says it’s not a security breach

Within minutes of users flooding social media with reports of the outage, Spotify’s official status account on X confirmed the problem:

“Hi everyone! We're aware of issues affecting the Spotify app and website loading. The right team is on it and working on a fix.”

Spotify was quick to assure that the outage was not a security breach and added that engineers were deploying a fix, beginning with restoring the search function.

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Rivals Gain Unlikely Praise Amid the Chaos

Meanwhile, during the outage, Spotify’s rivals had a surprising moment in the sun. Users began joking on X (formerly Twitter), making a case for Apple Music and YouTube Music.

An X user wrote:

YouTube music would never let you down btw"

Another user commented:

"WHY IS SPOTIFY DOWN RIGHT NOW???"

@JumpmanLow wrote on X:

"I can’t hear you over my Apple Music."

Dieggo commented:

"Spotify down for an hour? That's a tragedy! How will we survive without our music therapy?"

Another user wrote:

"That's why YT music clears"

One user complained on X:

"I was refreshing my internet again and again from last 30 mins"

Within hours, memes emerged, depicting Apple Music and YouTube Music users “welcoming refugees” from Spotify with open arms. Several users reported they had downloaded rival apps “just in case.”

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Service Gradually Restored After Nearly 6 Hours

By 11:45 a.m. ET, Spotify announced that the service had been fully restored for most users. Some still experienced lingering issues, including delayed loading of content or accessing playlists. However, these issues were fixed within the hour. A follow-up tweet by Spotify confirmed:

"Everything's looking much better now."

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What Comes Next for Spotify

Spotify has yet to elaborate on the outage, though more technical details are likely to be reported in the next few days. Low-profile outages of this scale are uncommon for the platform and can be costly, in terms of both user trust and potential ad revenue during peak engagement times.

For now, Spotify is back online, but today’s disruption delivered a clear takeaway: It’s quite noticeable when the music stops.