Spotify started to sputter on Sunday morning, with thousands of users reporting technical problems accessing the streaming service.

According to availability monitoring service Downdetector, user error messages for Spotify began increasing around 10:45 a.m. ET on September 29th. According to Downdetector, the number of complaints was over 9,000 at 11:00 a.m. and over 15,000 at 11:35 a.m. In Spotify's desktop app, some users were greeted with the error message “An error has occurred” and attempts to play songs and albums were unsuccessful. The streamer's smartphone apps also did not respond for many users.

User reports of Downdetector spanned across the United States, with issues also reported by Spotify listeners in Canada and other countries.

On Sunday, customer service accounts Spotify Status and Spotify Cares on X did not immediately indicate widespread problems with the service. In response to some users' complaint, the support team also recommended users to log out, restart their device and log in again.

Spotify, like any other large-scale Internet service, has experienced intermittent outages in the past. For example, in March 2022, users of the service had trouble logging in because Spotify said their username and password were incorrect; These issues were resolved after about an hour and a half.

At the end of June, Spotify reported a total of 626 million active monthly users, a sequential increase of 11 million, including 246 million premium subscribers (up 7 million in the second quarter). The company reported record quarterly net profit of 274 million euros on sales of 3.81 billion euros, an increase of 20% year-on-year.