App running extremely slow and glitches

[Terminator79]

Plan
Premium family

Country
United states

Devices
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, lenovo ideapad flex 5, custom windows 10 desktop
 
Operating Systems
Windows 11 on laptop, Windows 10 on desktop, Android 14
 
 
My Question or Issue
So over the past year or so, Spotify on my Windows computers has been extremely slow, basically unusable. Now I am having the exact same problems on my phone.
 
When first starting, Spotify will load to a gray screen for around 30 seconds. This happens around 85% of the time, and the remaining 15% of the time it starts normally. Whenever I try to go into a playlist, it will also just show a gray screen for around 15 seconds, then loads. This wouldn't even be THAT bad, but even when it is fully loaded up, there is a minimum of a 10 second delay before any of my actions have an effect. If I try to skip a song, it continues playing for at least 10 seconds, sometimes it's actually such a bad delay that the song will finish before it skips. This happens on every single one of my devices. 

Now, I am experiencing a lot of glitches on the mobile version as well. Oftentimes the song playing will not match to the song that Spotify says it's playing (it shows either the previous or next song playing). Spotify also glitches where I can't actually scroll through the lyrics, I can only view the scrolling preview that shows the line currently being sung. Also, while searching for songs, it will not actually play them when I want. The search itself works fine, but when I press a song to play it will say "this song is unavailable". 
 
I don't have the absolute top of the line electronics, but as an engineer I use CAD software on both of my windows computers with 0 issues, so unless Spotify is somehow more hardware draining than CAD, this is ridiculous. 
 
SOLUTIONS I ALREADY TRIED (on all devices):
Clearing the cache (this does rarely work for a little bit)
Uninstalling and reinstalling Spotify

connected to ethernet and WIFI
Different Wi-Fi networks (fastest network I have access to is about 400mbps Up and Down)
Signing out and signing back in
(For windows): installing from Microsoft store application and EXE from Spotify website
VPN on and off (proton VPN, paid)
 
Thank you in advance!

[Ivelina]

Hello @Terminator79,

Welcome to the Community! 

We really appreciate you taking the time to post about this issue here and including all of the details, as well as troubleshooting steps you've tried so far. It really helps us with the investigation.

First I'd like to ask in case you noticed when this behavior of Spotify originally started to happen on your devices and if perhaps it was after something specific? 

You did mention that you've tested with different Wi-Fi networks, but does the same thing happen also with mobile data on the phone? If possible, you can even share mobile data to the computer via hotspot for further testing of the network connection.

If the behavior changes with mobile data, then the issue may be caused by the Wi-Fi connection and if that's the case you can change the DNS settings on your router to 8.8.8.8. 

Lastly, it'd be great if you could ask a relative or a friend to log in to their account on your devices to test if Spotify behaves different for them as this may even be an account-related issue.

Thanks for the cooperation and we'll be on the lookout for your response 🙂

[Terminator79]

Hi, I'm so sorry for the late response!! I never saw a notification for your message!

It seems to be completely random, my devices never started doing this together or after anything specific. 

Actually now that you mention it, I think it is usually okay using mobile data. I used a mobile hotspot to connect my desktop to data, and it also seems to be running fine for the past 10 minutes or so. Unfortunately, as I am currently at a college dorm, I do not have access to my DNS router settings. However, I did check my desktops DNS settings, and it is set to use 8.8.8.8. And lastly, I have talked to other Spotify users and they have reported the same issue as me, so I assumed it was not an account issue.

Thank you for your help and I'm looking forward to another quick response from you! [I promise ill keep a look out for it and respond as quickly as you did 🙂 ]

EDIT: been running my desktop and phone off of mobile data for the past half hour or so. It is definitely better, but there is still at least a 5-10 second delay

[OscarDC]

Hey @Terminator79,

Thank you for keeping in contact and for the info shared.

Taking into account that it worked better with mobile data, it's possible that the issue could be network-related since you're using a college network and they may have some limitations or restrictions. To check if this could be the reason, would you mind checking if the Web Player has the same behavior on your computer?

Also and if possible, since home networks are usually faster than mobile data, it would be great if you could test this with a different high-speed Wi-Fi connection to see if it makes any difference. 

We'll be waiting for your response.

[Terminator79]

The web player does seem to work pretty well actually, so I think it is only with the apps on mobile and desktop.

As for network speed, the wifi I am currently on (the college wifi) is about 100mbps download and about 75 upload. However, my home wifi is the fastest wifi I have access to, about 400mbps upload and download. Both of these network speed should be plenty fine for spotify, which is one of the reasons I have been so confused as to the cause of the problem.

Again thanks for the quick response!

[OscarDC]

Hey @Terminator79,

Thank you for keeping in contact and for the info shared.

Since the Web player seems to be working fine, most likely the college network may have some restrictions that affect the proper behavior of the app on your devices. Just to cover all the basics, we'd recommend installing the app while in safe mode to see if it makes any difference. To do so:
 

1. Download Spotify from the official website or the Microsoft store
2. Restart your computer in Safe Mode by pressing and holding the F8 key while your computer is restarting
3. Open the Spotify Installer and go through the installation process
4. Restart your computer normally
5. Open Spotify

If the issue persists, we'd also recommend keep using the Web Player in the meantime or download your content and use the app in Offline mode. 

Hope this helps. If anything else comes up, the Community will be here for you. 

[Terminator79]

As I mentioned before, this happens on all my devices on all networks. This includes on my home Wi-Fi, which has zero restrictions, and is also far faster than my school Wi-Fi. Although the app did seem to work better on mobile data, the issue still persists on any Wi-Fi that I am on.

As per running my devices in safe mode, I was only able to run my desktop in safe mode, as my laptop does not have an ethernet port and Windows in safe mode does not support Wi-Fi. While in safe mode, Spotify ran well, exactly as fast as it used to be. However, once I restarted my computer (disabling safe mode), the slowness of the application returned, making it nearly unusable.

It is not practical that I would need to use the Web Player, as this is not the purpose of installing an application to my computer. In addition, using the app in offline mode is also not a practical solution, as this severely limits the features available to me, I would need to use a large amount of storage, and finally I would also have to turn offline mode on/off repetitively anytime I want to add a song to any playlist.

[OscarDC]

Hey @Terminator79,

Thank you for keeping in contact.

Taking into account that safe mode is a way to start a computer using only the essential programs, if the app works fine in this mode, it means that something external is affecting the proper behavior of the app. 

We'll still pass this info internally so it can be reviewed by the relevant teams taking into account that we couldn't replicate the behavior on our end. We don't have a specific date for this to be resolved, we hope it will be as soon as possible.

We'd also recommend keeping your Spotify app updated, so you don't miss any improvements coming your way.

If anything else comes up, don't hesitate to ask.