Spotify VERY slow.

[Millionaire]

Songs are buffering extremely slowly, searches take forever, downloading songs for offline use take too long.  Whats going on guys? About to cancel if this doesn't get fixed, i've seen others say the same.

[Millionaire]

It seems like it's getting better on some days, but generally it's not as fast as it used to.  Some days the desktop client barely works.  Today's complaint:  WTF is up with the search speed??  

Spotify was great up until last month and I have been a paying customer since the inception of this service but......fix it, PLEASE!  

[tuopas]

Same here. Spotify app extremely slow, mostly just spinning wheel. Until I switch it to offline mode - the everyhting works perfectly. No other issues with the OS or the internet connection on my computer, or with Spotify on any mobile devices. This has been going for maybe a couple of weeks? I use Spotify daily via Sonos with no problems, but the Mac app is all messed up.

OS X 10.8.3, Spotify 0.9.0.133.

[RoyalScam]

I'm on Mac too...still slow for me too, even after signing out and back in and updating to the latest version.

I did delete TWO FRIGGIN' GIGABYTES of cache tonight, so maybe that'll speed things up next time...

[AbsolutelyNoFB]

@RoyalScam

I don't the speed issues with the v0.9.133 client have anything to do with the cache. The client is so slow, it looks like a video recording running in slow motion. I mean one can literally watch the playlist text paint on the screen... this is on a quad core iMac with 16GB RAM.

For the most part, all the newer Spotify clients are utterly pathetic piles of junk. Yet Spotify has some sort of hole in their head and won't let paying customers run the old speedy clients. They'd rather lose their customers than support their customers.

[RoyalScam]

Yep, I'm on a Quad Core Mac Pro with 12GB of RAM...so, speed shouldn't be an issue with me either.

Wish they'd wake up and provide explanations. Hello?? Is this thing on???

[dtashner]

I just started seeing this happen with my Windows client (0.9.0.133) starting last night (Win 7 x64 Ultimate, Ivy Bridge i7 Intel Proc, 16GB RAM, Verizon FIOS 42Mbps up and 37 Mbps down).  Web client seems to work fine.  A few songs stopped and started so frequently last night I just quit using Spotify.

[Radian]

It's now almost guarenteed that the Spotify client will choke on just about any task I give it. Browsing content is just one boring wait after another with part-populated views, missing cover art and one and sometimes even two spinners to watch go round. Really unusable and frustrating alot of the time.

The Web player is noticably faster at doing most things - side by side the web player can browse to and play stuff much better it seems. This should surely be enough to rule out my internet connection (ISP Eclipse.net). The last speedtest I did when it was bad came in at 16.8Mbps.

Windows 7 64bit, SP1  Spotify 0.9.0.133.gd18ed589

[bm8000]

I have the same problem. No matter what platform I use, in the late afternoons and evenings Spotify is mostly dead in the water for a fwe weeks now (and speedtest.net gives me a consistent 3-5Mbps during these periods). Switching to offline mode gets things trickling in at a rate of 2 tracks per hour...very disappointing!! Growth problems?? I am considering the new Google service - at least one can expect that Google has their servers oiled up and ready to go...;-).

[jwramp]

I'm seeing the same problems on a 75MB Verizon Fios connection in Pittsburgh. Fully updated this-year Mac Mini server with version 0.9.0.133.gd*** installed.

Seems like it just started in the last week or so. Buffer songs for 5-10 seconds, plays for 10-20 seconds then cuts out and buffers - continues to buffer every 10-20 seconds or so.

Very annoying as a paying customer. Any news on a fix?

[user-removed]

Songs will stop during playback and then skip to a farther along part in the song...

[tommyvonb]

Same here. This has been the most frustrating experience. Spotify is dropping the ball and not responding. I did a ton of searches and haven't found an answer that works. On my phone and iPad it takes a few to load and works ok, it drops on my phone too much. On my mac mini it takes forever to load and nothing works. I have reinstalled and followed other posts on here to get it to work.

No dice.

This is almost as bad as when it first came out, spotty playback and NO REPSONSES! 

Come on Spotify get with the program.

[RockShu]

Spotify is indeed slow. It's weird, I was just skipping through some songs quickly and every 10th or so song doesn't play immediately and after about 30 seconds or so suddenly starts playing. After that I can quickly skip through about 10 or so songs and then one doesn't play immediately again. It's freaking annoying, I can tell you that.

[Peter__]

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@RockShu wrote:

Spotify is indeed slow. It's weird, I was just skipping through some songs quickly and every 10th or so song doesn't play immediately and after about 30 seconds or so suddenly starts playing. After that I can quickly skip through about 10 or so songs and then one doesn't play immediately again. It's freaking annoying, I can tell you that.

---

That sounds like possible rate limiting, I have seen it before if you grab the console output skipping very quickly does trigger some sort of rate limiting code. 

Peter

[RockShu]

---

@Peter wrote:

That sounds like possible rate limiting, I have seen it before if you grab the console output skipping very quickly does trigger some sort of rate limiting code. 

Peter

---

Hm, I've done this before plenty of times when skipping through playlists. Weird. And it's not like I was selecting hundreds of songs one after another. Right now I'm waiting for a song to load for at least 60-80 seconds.

[lyddonb]

I have the same issues. Everything is so slow. No matter what mac I'm on. High end retina and IMac. Cleared cache. Re-installed. Nothing. Still constantly slow.

[user-removed]

I think some client-side and server-side retooling is in order.

[twinmos]

Same problem here. Pc client is very slow and its almost impossible to listen to songs. Have to press pause and wait 1-2 min before i can start the song. Searching is also very slow. Web player does not have the same problems. Plays perfect from first second and searching is much faster. This happens at work and home, different computer, different isp.

ISP:

Movistar VDSL 30 mbit

Idecnet ADSL 6 mbit

[fearu]

0.9.1.57, unbelievably slow on windows client. Slow buffering the song. Slow searching. Slow loading artist information. Sometimes the albums don't load ever (just the header, 10 best songs, etc.), sometimes streaming stops and only fixes restarting client. I have even had (2 updates before) weird bugs like loading the image from one artist and the rest of the page from other artist, or also the header (top ten songs, title, etc.) from one artist and albums from other. This happend clicking one artist and then clicking another because loading was slow as hell, then it would stay forever like this, with this wrong information.

ISP: Telefónica

[tommyvonb]

It is not rate limiting. The desktop client takes forever to load and uses a ton of resources. I use the web client that actually works but you geniuses somehow forgot we have folders, it takes a ton of time to find things again.
Poor execution all around, please get this nonsense fixed.

[Rollo_]

I installed 0.9.1.57 last night, put it through the paces, and found no performance problems whatsoever.  Startup was 5 seconds to start playing a resumed track.  5 year old Dell with a fairly new XP install, 2 GB ram, K-Lite Codec pack, java/flash/everything up to date.

Unless you give the specifics of your system, not much can be done to address your problem.  My guess is that most of the performance issues are caused by conflicts of some sort at the user end, which are incredibly difficult to diagnose. 

In my case the update was from 0.8.3 so there was really no leftover garbage from recent versions on my system.  A clean install might be in order.  I'd try that first, use Windows add/remove programs, don't reinstall directly over the old install.  [You'd be surprised how many users don't know what a clean install is.]