Spotify users began to experience problems logging in around 1pm ET on March 8, according to crowdsourced reports on service outage site Downdetector. According to an article in Variety, users attempting to log in to the site received messages that their username or password was incorrect and that attempts to play songs were met with this error message: “We’re all mixed up. Refresh this page or try again later. It may take some time to get things up again.” Subscribers on the mobile app received a mobile app informing them that they were logged out.
Spotify stated in a tweet from the “Spotify Status” account, saying, “Something’s not quite right, and we’re looking into it. Thanks for your reports!”
As of 2:39pm ET, it looked like the service has come back online for most users, with the Spotify Status account reporting: “Everything’s looking much better now! Give @SpotifyCares a shout if you still need help.”
As of press time, there was no explanation for why Spotify went dark.
Spotify is the largest music subscription streaming service, with 406 million users as of 2021, 180 million of which are paying subscribers. The second-largest reported service is Apple Music, with 60 million subscribers as of 2019. With Spotify Premium plans starting at $9.99 USD, that means the company has at least $1 billion monthly in fees at stake.
Earlier this year, Spotify experienced controversy when superstar podcast host Joe Rogan, with whom the company has an exclusive deal reportedly worth around $100 million, was accused of spreading COVID misinformation, causing recording artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell to pull their music from the service. There’s no evidence suggesting this outage was related to the controversy.