A lot of folks around the world couldn’t listen to music on Spotify this week. The streaming service ran into some trouble, and it stopped working properly for many users. No one knows for sure what caused the problem yet, but some people are saying it might’ve been a planned cyberattack.
On Wednesday afternoon, a website called DownDetector, which keeps track of tech outages, reported more than 48,000 issues with Spotify. In the UK, problems peaked around 1:30 p.m.—just 30 minutes after the trouble started. Things began to settle down by 3 p.m., with reports dropping to about 10,000.
A spokesperson from Spotify said, “We’re aware of the service disruption and we’re working quickly to fix it. Claims that this was a hacking incident are completely false.” They also mentioned that folks can check for updates on Spotify’s official @SpotifyStatus page.
Spotify, which is based in Sweden, hasn’t said what exactly went wrong or how long the issue might last. But the company, which serves over 675 million users around the world, told PeoplesProNews that the search issue had been fixed and they were rolling out an update to users.
Many users said they could still play songs they had already downloaded, but they couldn’t look up artist profiles or use the search tool in the app. For some, Spotify was running really slow—or not at all. When trying to search, users were getting a message that said “Something went wrong,” with an option to try again.
A lot of folks turned to social media to vent their frustration. Some said it threw off their gym workouts, study sessions, or everyday routines.
Spotify was started back on April 23, 2006, in Stockholm, Sweden, by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. These days, it’s a public company traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: SPOT).
In 2023, Spotify brought in about €13.24 billion in revenue (that’s around $14.2 billion USD). Still, the company hasn’t made a profit—last year they reported a net loss of €532 million.
By the end of 2023, Spotify had 602 million monthly active users, including 236 million paying subscribers.
Most of Spotify’s money comes from premium subscriptions (about 87%), with ads making up the other 13%. Lately, they’ve also been investing more into podcasts and audiobooks. Even though their main office is in Sweden, they now serve people in 178 countries.