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.

[lyddonb]

It's on a mac. And I've killed everything (I'm a programmer so I'm pretty comfortable digging in).

I cleared storage. Fresh install. Everything. I also have it installed on 2 different macs and I get the same issues on both. My wife's mac has no problem with her version.

[Rollo_]

It sure seems like Mac users are having more that their share of problems with this version.  I'd go back to an older version if I were you.  I switch back and forth pretty frequently. 

http://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-Desktop-Linux-Mac-and/Revert-back-to-Spotify-0-8-5-on-Mac/td-p/...

[davidyork]

I'm using the windows desktop version (9.1.57) and it is so much slower to do things like populate lists eg it will show an album graphic and then there is quite a delay before the list of tracks appears. Never used to be like this.

[Radian]

Often, when Spotify is on a "go slow" I do the following:

1. Log out
2. Quit Spotify
3. Delete entire cache folder (located at something like "C:\Users\........\AppData\Local\Spotify")

The when I start Spotify again it more often than not works at a sensible speed. This also "unblocks" my activity feed which is now basically a "snapshot" of everything I'm following that only updates the once, each time I delete the cache.

(The location of the cache folder is shown when you go to Edit>Preferences)

[davetpt]

Thanks, worked a treat

[lambertobutler]

Thanks for that unintentional tip. Forget 2GB- mine was 10GB!

This thing is working like a charm now!

[shanm1971]

Thank you, Radian!  My cache was enormous!

Best to you,

Shan 🙂

[grivad]

Tried the clearing AppData bit (mine was ~2GB).  Seemed to be faster for a sec, but within seconds, it's back to it's super slow self.

Version 0.9.6.81, Windows 8.1 x64.  Core i5, 8GB RAM, 64 mbit inet, machine hardwired via gigabit.

Previews won't even load.  Music plays for a sec but then pauses for a few seconds every so often, sometimes for longer.  Seeking takes forever.  Loading artist information takes forever.  Seems to work a little better on another machine in the house which is identical to this one, however still have latency/pausing issues.  The machines are literally identical.  Also works perfectly on my mobile, whether it's on the same network or over mobile data.  Issue is not my internet or network, it's blazing fast for everything else.

Spotify staff, can you not provide us with troubleshooting tips or suggestions, or what additional info can we provide to get this resolved?  This is pretty bad.  The app used to be incredibly responsive.  Notsomuch anymore.

[cmurdy63]

Spotify is super slow if this is not fixed soon they can forget my $10.00 bucks a month. This is crazy I pay a premium I expect a premium product. Figure it out Spotify, and don't even try and tell me it is my computer with 32g memory ssd and core 7 and speed test internet at 56mb it's not me.  Pandora has no issues at all.  

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@Millionaire wrote:

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.

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[kdpainter]

This latest version (0.9.7.16.g4b197456 on Windows 7 Pro x64) is horrible!  Everything is very slow.  If I could just go back to the last version.

[rdo1213]

This used to happen to me quite often and it was very frustrating. I determined that it had more to do with my computer than spotify itself. 

The best solution was always to just restart my computer. Also, try getting rid of extra unneeded data stored on your computer-apps, pictures, downloaded music etc. I used to have problems all the time but once I cleaned up my computer it's really started working again

[kdpainter]

I solved my problem by completely uninstalling Spotify and reinstalling.  Restarting my computer didn't help.  I am always suspicious of "updates" and this one went bad.  All is fine now though.  Spotify is a sluggish app but not that bad!  Thanks for taking the time to answer!

[Radian]

The sluggishness that comes and goes can't be attributed to the Spotify desktop client. This application can be silky smooth at times. Something beyond the customer's LAN and which the customer has no control over gets in the way and renders the service all but unusable for several hours at a time.

In particular I've noticed that it seems to happen more frequenty when I've gone away from a PC that has Spotify running and paused playback - only to return and resume playback a few hours later to find it stalling once more. In these cases logging out and back in can usually improve the responsiveness.

We could do with some kind of network traffic analyser that is able to log requests to the Spotify servers and their responses. Presumably P2P isn't involved with browsing? I'm assuming that the slow response to browsing is a separate issue to streaming. Incidentally, the Windows web browser client appears to have no similar speed issues when things are bad with the desktop client on my PC.

[kdpainter]

What you say is true with regard to the LAN.  But, while it is waiting for a response, it is locked up and that is due to the design of the application. You say "The sluggishness that comes and goes can't be attributed to the Spotify desktop client" and then say "I've noticed that it seems to happen more frequenty when I've gone away from a PC that has Spotify running and paused playback".  Those two observations are completely at odds with each other.

[Radian]

Hi kdpainter. I was wondering whether or not you intended to attribute the unresponsiveness discussed in this topic to the external Spotify services when you wrote:  "Spotify is a sluggish app but not that bad!". Perhaps you could clarify which component you beleive to be the most probable cause of the slow response that people here are experiencing.

I don't know about yours but I wouldn't describe my client application as locking-up. I can freely click around the various menus and options - however, it's aparently unable to load the external data needed to populate the main central window and the Activity feed on the right. This is why my focus is on the external Spotify service as the most probable location of the bottlenecks that choke the client.

I also wonder how you arrive at your conclusion that two of my statements were mutually exclusive. Leaving Spotify when working perfectly, only to return some time later having made no changes other than going from pause to play does not exclude the possibility that the external service has somehow rejected the client, indeed it continues to convince me that this is the case.

[Rollo_]

I think that Radian is saying the there is something in the stream, or lack of it, that is causing the slowdown, as opposed to the software itself.  Regardless, the two are related. 

I've noticed that when either the Activity Feed or Discover, for example, if either are slow to load, everything slows to a crawl.  Like the software is trying to load something that isn't there, over and over.  If this is the case, and users can only field test by trial and error, then a retry timeout built into the code would likely prevent the slowdowns.

This morning, Spotify was really slow and unresponsive.  i couldn't scroll a playlist without waiting at least 3-5 seconds for it to react.  This afternoon you'd almost think it was 0.8.5 again.

In any case, you may want to check the wireless connection if you're not wired, both signal strength and speed.  Can't hurt to check it.

[kneipe2]

I'm using the web version of spotify right now since the actually desktop spotify was lagging, and not just a few seconds (sometime more than two minutes). The web player is working better, but it's pausing briefly (a second or less) every ten seconds or so. This is after uninstalling, cleaning up my disk, reinstalling, optimizing my computers performance, and then restarting.

If the developers think the users are full of **bleep**, we should start taking video of how 'wonderful' spotify is working and sending it to them. They need to keep in mind that people are not running this in a pristine environment and usually are working while they listen to music, or doing something else (also, the majority of people are probably running a standard machine, not a monster) Their responses, or lack thereof, are very arrogant. For an entity that wants people to pay to use it they sure provide terrible overall service, at least from responses I've read from people in the forums (I've never paid for it and so can't say from personal experience, and it's precisely these issues that never seem to get truly fixed why I will not pay for spotify). For a free product, well, it's free, and I won't complain too loudly about that, but I won't pay for it in it's current state either.

Switching back to my zune, the lag is getting too annoying. Even spotify's webpages are loading very slowly (nothing else is in my browser).

[Radian]

Can anyone who understands the technical framework on which Spotify works suggest why the service falters at certain times and not others?

The obvious suggestion is that my local internet connection is causing the holdups -  that would fit the "time of day" profile, yet I can still get a sustained 16mbits/s using a speedtester when Spotify is jst sat spinning. I've even raised the issue with my ISP to make sure they weren't throttling Spotify and they assured me that they were not.

I've been trying Spotify first thing in the morning here in the UK and it's as smooth as silk. Later in the day it is totally different. Usually trouble starts with a long delay before populating an artist's overview, this can take tens of seconds to minutes to complete. Then playback will stall every 10 seconds or so, for maybe 10 times before staggering to the end of a track. As I've commented before, logging out and back in again sometimes appears to give temporary relief. Sometimes clearing the cache smooths things up. Generally though, when it's going through a bad patch, you're stuck with it.

People I know that use Spotify in other counties of the UK also experience the same kind of issue which leads me to another idea for an experiment - a realtime thread for people to drop in and report their location and service quality. Maybe we could run that on these forums?

[Peter__]

I do wonder due to the p2p structure of Spotify is the weak link at peak times not volume of traffic, but volume of open connections. Peak times = more clients = more incoming and outgoing connections in the clients.

Interestingly, I always had similar issues with my BT home hub router in the UK, speed would be fine but Spotify would be awful. Swapped that out for a Netgear router and now I don't have any of these issues.

[fivestarfolds]

same problem for the last several months. We are canceling within in a month of not resolved.