Spotify Is Down

It's not just you: Spotify is down.

Spotify Is Down

Jake Peterson

Jake Peterson Senior Technology Editor

Experience

Jake Peterson is Lifehacker’s Tech Editor, and has been covering tech news and how-tos for nearly a decade. His team covers all things technology, including AI, smartphones, computers, game consoles, and subscriptions.

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May 12, 2026

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Key Takeaways

Spotify is currently down. Tens of thousands of users have reported issues to Downdetector, which is owned by Lifehacker parent company Ziff Davis. Spotify confirmed the issue on their end, reporting that they are "checking them out."

Table of Contents


If you tried to launch Spotify today to listen to a song or a podcast, only to find the player endlessly loading, you're not alone: Spotify is down. The company confirmed the issue on X via its "Spotify Support" page, posting "We’re aware of some issues right now with the app and are checking them out!"

You didn't need to see this X announcement to learn about the outage, however. Anyone trying to access the service right now will run into a roadblock. I can make it to my library, but when I try to stream a song, I just see the playbar loading over and over again. Downdetector, owned by Lifehacker parent company Ziff Davis, currently displays tens of thousands of user reports confirming the same.

What do you think so far?

Service outages are a dime a dozen these days. Most platforms and services experience downtime at one point or another, and, in most cases, the connection is restored relatively quickly. It doesn't seem to be an issue with a cloud service provider like AWS or Cloudflare, either, since Downdetector isn't showing many other apps and platforms with service issues at this time. We don't know exactly what's causing this Spotify outage, but, barring some unique event, the company's software development team will soon isolate the issue, and release a patch to fix it. Before long, I imagine Spotify users will be streaming again.

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