Spotify is down, users reporting 502 bad gateway errors

Many Spotify users are seeing an error 502 bad gateway when trying to use the service, and the outrage is growing.

People seeking to listen to their favorite podcasts, music, audiobooks, and more are instead seeing error messages and have gone on to Twitter to vent about it, inspiring the hashtag, #SpotifyDown. As of this report, Spotify has yet to publicly address the outage, and it’s not the first time it’s happened. In fact, this is the second time it’s happened in two weeks.

Data that’s been aggregated by Downdetector shows an increase in complaints to Spotify around 10 a.m. PT. Based on comments, Spotify users claim that the desktop version of the app is giving a “firewall” error message, and the mobile app is giving a “gateway” error message. Either way, it’s inconvenient for all parties involved.

A 502 bad gateway indicates that a server has been sent an invalid response from an inbound server. Sometimes it’s an issue with a user’s computer or the connection between a user’s hardware or network. The last time this happened, Spotify never addressed what was the actual cause of this issue, so it’s unclear whether they will address this interest.

Unfortunately, there’s not much that can be done apart from the standard workarounds: refreshing the page, trying another browser, clearing the browser’s cache and cookies, and changing DNS servers. But since the error is usually on the server, this doesn’t always help matters.

It’s disconcerting to many that this has happened so quickly after the last issue, but at least they can complain about it with others who are going through media withdrawal.