Spotify restores service after Wednesday outage

On December 4, 2023, the Spotify logo was shown on a screen at the New York Stock Exchange. The music-streaming service experienced an outage with around 50,000 reports on Downdetector. Spotify later confirmed on social media that the issue was resolved, expressing gratitude to listeners for their patience. The company stated that the outage began at 6:20 am EDT and was fixed by 11:45 am EDT. However, no further details regarding the extent of the outage were provided. Users responded to the announcement with frustrations and memes, with one user jokingly saying they would hum to themselves.

Spotify recently announced its first profitable year and disclosed paying a record $10 billion in royalties to the music industry. Over 1,500 artists earned more than $1 million each, with over 80% of them not having a song on the app’s Global Daily Top 50 Chart. The company introduced new advertising features, including generative artificial intelligence ads, which generated $2 billion in ad spending with digital audio channels since the start of the year. Out of Spotify’s 675 million monthly active users, more than half are free users who receive ads while streaming music. The company continues to evolve its offerings, with ongoing updates expected.