Spotify was down — Live updates on music streamer issues

Starting around 3:30 p.m. ET, Spotify started having issues preventing listeners from using hte music streaming service. According to Downdetector, reports quickly spiked hitting around 1,000 reports before dramatically rising from there.

We saw a range of issues reported from the desktop play not loading properly to the Mac app not working. Some people even reported that the mobile app was unaccessible as well.

Through some testing, we found that the desktop browser version wouldn't load the main screen, though clicking around seemed to resolve it. On the mobile front, the app wouldn't load playlists or recently played at all.

The outage lasted just over an hour before seeming to resolve around 4:30 p.m. ET. As far as we can tell Spotify never acknowledged any issues today and the company's status page doesn't show any incidents. So, it's still not clear what caused the system to fail today.

Here’s what we know about the Spotify outage.

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2026-03-16T19:53:37.595Z

Huge spike for Spotify being down

spotify outage. — (Image credit: Downdetector)

The first reports of Spotify being down happened shortly after 3:00 p.m. ET according to Downdetector, reaching to about 1,215 reports by 3:51 p.m. Users are reporting a wide range of issues from the web player to the apps.

2026-03-16T20:19:37.192Z

Spotify is experiencing issues

Hey, folks! Tony Polanco here to update this blog for the next 45 minutes. I just fired up Spotify, and it's down for me as well. I guess I'll have to wait to listen to Kiss Alive! I'll keep you updated with the latest news, so stay tuned!

2026-03-16T20:29:51.695Z

A slight drop

As of 4:06 pm ET, the number of reports on Downdetector has dropped from 1,246 to 1,204. Hopefully, this trend will continue (and accelerate) so we can all go back to listening to our favorite tunes and podcasts.

2026-03-16T20:41:11.114Z

Signs of life

I just checked both the desktop and phone app versions of Spotify, and both are working. The desktop took a second or two longer than usual, but I'm able to use it again now. Hopefully, this means service will be restored to normal soon.

2026-03-16T20:50:48.734Z

Reports take a huge dive

Spotify update — (Image credit: Spotify)

We might be back in business, folks! As of 4:27 pm ET, reports dropped from 1050 to 252. While some might still be experiencing issues, this could mean the worst is behind us.

2026-03-16T21:03:00.439Z

That's all she wrote

Today's outage appears to be over with reports on Down Detector well under 100 as of this posting.

To be fair, reports never really hit higher than 2,000 today so it may not have been as widespread as initially believed.

As of this writing, Spotify hasn't acknowledged any problems and everything appears back to normal.