Spotify experienced a significant outage on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, leaving tens of thousands of users unable to stream music, access their libraries, or even open the app across both mobile and desktop platforms.
Reports of problems began flooding into outage tracker Downdetector shortly after 9 a.m. PT, with the number of complaints climbing rapidly throughout the morning and peaking at approximately 13,800 to 14,000 reports within the first hour of the disruption.
By 10:30 a.m. PT, more than 7,000 users had already flagged issues, a figure that continued to climb as the outage persisted, with Downdetector eventually recording more than 30,000 total reports as the disruption stretched across multiple hours.
The majority of affected users reported problems specifically with the mobile application, though desktop users also reported difficulty getting the app to load, and some users found the service partially functional with significant buffering issues rather than a complete blackout.
Spotify acknowledged the outage in a post on X, writing “We’re aware of some issues right now with the app and are checking them out!” without providing a specific cause, a timeline for resolution, or any follow-up updates for several hours after the initial confirmation.
One notable quirk reported by users on social media was that while streaming was broken, Spotify’s advertising system appeared to continue functioning normally, drawing a wave of frustrated and humorous responses from users who found themselves unable to play music but still being served ads.
Offline content, downloaded for listening without an internet connection, appeared to be working for users who had previously downloaded their playlists, offering a workaround for those caught without access to the live service.
Users in both the United States and the United Kingdom were among the most heavily affected, with UK Downdetector reports at times outpacing US figures as the outage rolled across time zones throughout the afternoon.
Spotify’s own official status page listed only a partial outage for May 12 without any detailed incident description or resolution timestamp, and StatusGator, a third-party service monitoring platform, flagged a service outage detected at 4:17 p.m. ET that was never officially acknowledged by Spotify.
Reports on Downdetector began tapering off later in the day, suggesting a gradual recovery, though tech reporters and users on social media noted that the service remained unstable for some users well into the evening, with intermittent buffering and playlist loading failures continuing hours after the initial peak.
