Refresh
Search is back on Spotify
"My subject: Best dance music of all time, of course. Can't say I'm thrilled with the results. Spotify gave me my playlist and when I clicked on the "songs" tab, I got, "No Songs found for "best dance music of all time"
"That has to be a mistake, no?
"In any case, search functioning is a very good sign, as the Spotify team scrambles to bring all of Spotify back on line."
2026-05-12T18:45:51.704Z
Here's Roland again with a helpful tip:
"If you have songs downloaded on Spotify they’ll still work as expected, so there’s one way to access some of your playlists. But I’m not 100% sure how many people do this, especially as, I believe, if you do this on multiple devices Spotify will then delete some downloaded songs on some devices; you can only spread the downloads so far.
"I tend to have a couple of downloaded playlists to get the best audio quality without sucking up my useless home internet bandwidth. But I could be in a minority with that. Still it means I have some music to listen to while I’m at my desk."
Stick with mobile
Here's another update from Lance in NYC, who seems to be having a slightly better experience with Spotify than some people right now.
"In my neck of the woods, mobile is now the most consistently trouble-free Spotify experience. The web player tries to keep pace, but can't seem to display anything in the main window.
"It knows I'm listening to Franz Ferdinand, but Spotify can't serve up whatever is supposed to appear front and center.
"The good news is that we still seem to be on the mend. Spotify should soon be back for all. I think."
2026-05-12T18:36:47.175Z
I said earlier that I no longer have a Spotify subscription, so none of this is directly affecting me — though I do, of course, feel bad for those of you who are unable to listen to your tunes right now.
I made the decision to leave the service in December and now subscribe to Qobuz instead — and I can't speak highly enough of it. Sure, it's not quite as slick as Spotify in some ways, but it fixes many of the personal issues I had with the better-known platform and — most importantly — it sounds absolutely fantastic. Seriously, if you love music and haven't given proper hi-res audio a go, I urge you to give it a try.
As it happens, we have a guide to how to switch from Spotify to Qobuz without losing your playlists.
Party off
So here's a thing: it’s Spotify's 20th anniversary today and that saw the company announce its new Spotify 20: Your Party of the Year(s) feature.
This is effectively a tool to show you your data from across your entire Spotify journey, starting from the first day you joined the service until now. it includes your most-streamed artist, the total number of streamed songs, and more.
We have no way of knowing what's caused the current outage, but could the implementation of this new feature have been a factor? I guess we'll find out later…
Spotify continues to struggle in the UK
Back to the UK, and this is what you see when you try to load up Spotify on the web right now. The interface partially loads, but music and podcasts are inaccessible, and everything is very slow.
If you're a Premium user, hopefully you've downloaded some of your favorite playlists for offline use. If not, you might have to wait a while to resume streaming (or just switch to YouTube).
2026-05-12T18:14:25.925Z
We're definitely still experiencing problems in the UK, where my colleague Roland Moore-Colyer is based (as am I). Here's Roland's update:
"While the outage was brewing US-side, I thought we’d missed it UK side, with Downdetector showing a slowing down of outage reports. But whatever is messing with Spotify seems to have blighted those of us in Blighty once again.
"So right now I’m writing with no musical assistance… someone pray for me."
We've reached out to Spotify for an update, and will let you know if we get a response.
2026-05-12T18:07:06.372Z
Okay, you know where I said it was working? Well it now seems not to be again.
What do you do when Spotify goes down?
It looks like this outage may be a relatively short-lived one, thankfully — because it can be hard, being cut off from your favorite music source.
2026-05-12T17:56:13.426Z
Right, big news… Lance says it's coming back. I'm still seeing reports on Down Detector, but they are indeed starting to drop.
Spotify sputtering in the US
I no longer subscribe to Spotify myself, but I asked my colleague Lance Ulanoff to try it, and he sent me this:
"Even though I can still open the app in the US, Spotify is struggling to respond to any of my requests. I can't play or search for music.
"The situation is even worse on the desktop. After a long wait, I got Spotify to open in Chrome, but when I tried to log in, I got an error message. No music for me."
Poor Lance, he'll have to do some work instead.
2026-05-12T17:46:55.004Z
Spotify has responded to users on X, admitting that it is "aware of some issues" and that it is checking them out.
We’re aware of some issues right now with the app and are checking them out!May 12, 2026
2026-05-12T17:44:39.679Z
You can see in the screenshot below that the numbers climbed steeply, with more than 14,000 users reporting problems 20 minutes ago.
2026-05-12T17:42:48.736Z
Okay, so what do we know? Well, outage reports started growing on Down Detector just under an hour ago.
Hi everyone. I'm going to dig into what's going on with Spotify, so stay tuned for updates as I get them.
English (US) ·