Why does Spotify on PC suck so bad?

[TheJehu]

Plan

Free/Premium

Country

Device

(iPhone 8, Samsung Galaxy 9, Macbook Pro late 2016)

Operating System

(iOS 10, Android Oreo, Windows 10,etc.)

My Question or Issue

I'm just here to complain about Spotify on PC in vain hopes that they might one day make it a good app. No app on my PC has ever given me such trouble. It crashes, stops playing music randomly, pauses my music randomly, won't load anything within the app like "home", settings, and even my DOWNLOADED playlists. If I ever try to solve these problems myself by closing the app and trying to reopen it, it will not work. All I get is an error. Spotify, fix your broken app so I can use the service that I pay you money for.

[dervi]

I have a Macbook and the app is just dreadful.

I have been waiting for it to start for about 15 minutes now, all blank. I have cleaned cache, downloaded the app again, accelerated the hardware. Nothing seems to solve.

The worst part is that we b paying for this **bleep**.

[Mihail]

Hey @TheJehu and @dervi,

Thanks for reaching out to the Community.

Apologies for the delayed response, we just came across this thread. We're sorry to hear that you're having issues like the ones you're describing. usually they are caused by the app cache getting damaged. Let us know if this issue persists once you've performed a clean reinstall on the affected device. We recommend this step since it'll get you the latest app version with all necessary updates and remove any corrupted files from previous installations. @TheJehu make sure to download the app version from the Microsoft store as it's the one best optimized for Windows 10.

It's also a good idea to disable hardware acceleration from the settings menu and see if that make a difference. Restart your device after toggling the setting to make sure that it's taken into account the next time you run the app.

Hope this was helpful for you. If you have questions, you know where to find us.

[dervi]

Hello, I've done the steps you described and it still doesn't work. I'm waiting for about 10 minutes now, it says it is not connected to the internet, but I'm writing this very e-mail with my internet connection.I just give up on spotify for desktop and I'll absolutely cancel my premium account.

[Novy]

Hi again @dervi, 

Thanks for keeping us in the loop. We're sorry to hear this, but we'll do our best to help you sort this out.

Would you mind letting us know if this happens when you log into your account using a different device? You can also ask a friend or a family member to log into their personal account from your device to see if they can replicate this.

If you're still having issues, could you send us a screenshot of the error message you're getting so we can take a better look? Make sure to exclude any personal information from the image. 

We'll be on the lookout for your reply.

[dervi]

Hi, it actually works on my cell phone with my account. On my computer it doesn't work at all though, logged on my account or anyone's account.

I can't send the screenshot because I'm in Brazil, and the moment I log in it put me in a different website. Sometimes it doesn't recognize the internet connection and sometimes it just blanks, nothing appears to work.

[Novy]

Hey @dervi, 

Thanks for your reply.

In this case, we'd recommend making sure that you're not connected to a firewall that might be blocking the app on your desktop. If you're using an Antivirus, make sure it isn't blocking Spotify either.

Also, could you give us more details about the login issues you mentioned? Send us your device's make, model, exact OS version and Spotify version so we can continue investigating this issue.

Keep us posted.

[LoboSpencer]

Biggest selling streaming service for music, has had literally years and a load of resources available to sort this out, but no. Looking at other options to stream my music now, sick of paying premium for a buggy POS

[Jeremy]

Hey there @LoboSpencer,

Thank you for your post in this thread. We're sorry to hear that you're having issue with the desktop app. We're happy to help you further so that you can use it as you should be able to.

Can you let us know if you followed the troubleshooting steps that's been provided in the thread?

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

Cheers!

[booji_mooji]

It's due to the fact that it's an Electron app which is one of the worst trends in the industry over the past few years.

I've tested the Spotify desktop app on Windows, Mac, and 4 different Linux distros and have had a miserable experience in all of them. It quickly slows down, takes too much CPU and RAM, it needs to be restarted every couple of hours, it disconnects and stops working way too frequently, the video podcast support is the biggest snitched-up mess I've seen in a giant tech company in years. Bottom line: it's useless.

Technically, it's not Spotify's fault that Electron is an inefficient RAM and CPU black hole that gives the illusion of cross-platform support while ruining everybody's experience across board and they really can't do much about it. Unfortunately, many other giants (e.g. Slack) are doing it as well so it's become a (very dismal) norm in the industry even among billion-dollar companies.

In my opinion, the Spotify team should either start from scratch and implement something native in Qt/Gtk like Telegram Messenger (which is a delight on every single platform I've worked with), or pull the plug on the whole client and have their users access Spotify in their browsers (at least that's how I've been using it on my Linux workstation recently).

[SIX1000]

Yep. It's this. I have 16 GB of RAM and Spotify still manages to hog a good bit. I also love it when I close Spotify sometimes and when I try to open it back up it says "Spotify is not responding". I've reinstalled over 10 times, and 90% of the time I open the Spotify app it is just a black screen.

[Eni]

Hey @SIX1000, 

Thanks for reaching out about this here in the Community. 

You mentioned that you've already reinstalled the app, but would you mind going through the steps of a clean reinstall, as it's more thorough than a normal one?

If this doesn't do the trick, could you try these specific steps @hvarday sent in that thread and let us know if they worked for you?

Keep us posted 🙂

[EduardoAyresS]

I have the same issue. I thought it was my internet connection, however now I moved to a new place and the internet is amazing, and guess what? The app is still slow.

[Mihail]

Hey @EduardoAyresS,

Thanks for reaching out.

We're sorry to hear that the app doesn't behave as expected and will do our best to get to the bottom of this. Could you let us know the approximate number of liked songs and followed playlist on your account? Also, did you try clean reinstalling the app and checking if the same behavior occurs when logged in on a different device? Make sure to also include the make, model, OS version and Spotify version you're running. The more details we have on your setup, the quicker we'll be able to help. 

Keep us posted. We’ll keep an eye out for your reply.

[EduardoAyresS]

It only happens on my iMac, but on my iPhone and iPad it is always super fast. Yes, I clean reinstalled it in the past, and it seemed to work at first for a day or so, and then it went back to be slow. My guess is that the app has some issues reaching the internet connection and that's why it becomes sluggish at initiation/starting.

Liked Songs: 73

Playlists: 40

Spotify: 1.1.56.595.g2d2da0de

macOS Big Sur

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019)

Processor 3.6 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9

Memory  64 GB 2667 MHz DDR4

[Ver]

Hey @EduardoAyresS,

Thanks for the info 🙂

Could you give these steps a go and check the hosts file? Are there any changes?

In case you're using a VPN, we'd suggest you turn it. We don't recommend using a VPN with Spotify as that might affect the functions.
 

Keep us in the loop! We'll be right here if you have any questions.

[EduardoAyresS]

I am not using on a web player. I am talking about the Desktop App. The host file doesn't have any Spotify entry in it.

[Jeremy]

Hi @EduardoAyresS,

Thank you for your reply and confirmation.

Can you confirm if you get the same behavior if you download Spotify from here?

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

Take care!

[EduardoAyresS]

Hi,

I downloaded it and it took maybe 3 minutes for it to be able to play a Playlist. Searching in the bar is immediate, but only after 5 minutes of initializing the app on Desktop.

It seems faster now, maybe because it was reinstalled. I hope it doesn't go to be slow again soon.

Spotify 1.1.56.595.g2d2da0de

[Eni]

Hi @EduardoAyresS, 

We're glad to hear that it's working fine now. Give us a shout if it starts misbehaving again; we're always here to help.

Have a nice one!