Slow loading and performance issues

[Yordan]

We've received reports about increased load times when performing actions like opening a playlist/menu or playing content. This affects primarily (but may not be limited to) mobile devices running Android and iOS.

[frrr]

Dear Spotify,

Your mobile app is now borderline unusable on Samsung Galaxy A02, even after disabling power-saving for the app, and even when listening to playlists with a small number of tracks/podcast episodes.

This comes soon after you injected additional splash ads or recommendations for 'sponsored content' in various places in your user interfaces, even to Premium users who at no point requested that feature.

There is no other way to describe what you are doing to your service than ensh!ttification at the highest degree. Oh, and of course you killed the only way to avoid that by discontinuing Spotify Lite.

Well done, I guess? What are you trying to achieve? Is that part of a large-scale experiment to see how many paying customers one can lose by injecting massive amounts of AI-generated code into a product that used to work?

[sportlow]

Over the past few years, Spotify on Android has become incredibly slow for me.

Spotify support told me the app was not designed to handle 3,000 playlists, so I deleted around 2,500 of them. It made no difference. A friend of mine only has five playlists and experiences the same slowdown, so I doubt the number of playlists is the real cause.

I’ve cleared the cache, reinstalled the app, and tried everything I can think of, but it is still painfully slow. When I add a song to a playlist, I often have to wait at least 30 seconds. I then need to check whether it was actually added, because sometimes it was not. That means waiting another 30 seconds, adding it again, and checking once more.

I do not have this problem with the desktop or web versions. I have also tested Spotify on two different Android phones and experienced the same issue on both.

It is incredibly frustrating and exhausting to use.

[violetcities]

I've been noticing this for months. At first I thought it's because my Galaxy S9 is kinda old, but then the app became just as sluggish on my new phone, a Galaxy A26 (Android 16). Spotify version 9.1.68.1888

Sometimes it takes several minutes for the home page to load, and if I dare to try and open my library or do anything at all before it's finished I'm stuck on the green loading circle forever.

More recently songs (in both albums and playlists) get stuck once they've finished playing, and I either have to start the next song manually or sometimes it moves on by itself after a few minutes. It also takes about 10 seconds between me hitting pause and the music actually stopping. I don't use huge playlists, I mainly listen to full albums, but even when I'm not even playing music the app is very laggy.

I clear my cache regularly and reinstalled the app, but it didn't help.

[delgadillouski]

• Motorola Moto E7 Power Android 10
• 9.1.72.1891  

I started experiencing this issue since almost 1 week ago, when coincidentally the PlayStore decided to update the app. Everything is slow to open, particularly albums, some EPs and most of my playlists. I can't play more than a single song everytime I close and re-open the app, because I can't change the song once I decide to play one. Images take a long time to load and in most cases I have to navigate a list without covers and empty slots. I did some cache cleaning and tried some simple solutions like restarting the app.

I found this forum by coincidence and I have to say that most of the solutions provided by Spotify are the most absurd advices and solutions I have ever seen, it's like telling someone with a bricked computer "have you tried to restart your computer?" or "have you tried logging in and deleting some files?", and it's enraging that they even dared to say "Probably your playlists are too long" as if it was the user's fault. Spotify's app was able to handle long playlists since a long time ago, until now.

Before finding this forum, I thought my device was failling, or that its Android version was outdated and no longer supported, but now I realize that even Android 16 devices are experiencing similar issues.

So, now I know what is going on and it's mostly Spotify's fault: They released a new version without broader testing and are trying to use paying customers as testers. The solution is simple: stop trying to troubleshot what's clearly broken, uninstall the app and downgrade it to a previous version not available from the PlayStore. I resorted back to 9.1.60.1970 from June 24 2026, please consider that downloading APK installers from the internet might be risky but it's the only real solution Spotify is letting us with, just procure to download them from reputable sources.

With that said, I'm back to listening music from my supposedly unsupported long playlists (some are about 700 songs long). I can also see song covers and download music directly into my 128GB A2 rated SD Card , without major issues or wait times. Who would be thought it wasn't my device's fault??

Edit: My last reply was deleted because it contained a link re-directing users to a website called apkpure, which provides installers for older app versions. If Spotify cares about their customers and is worried about their safety, it should allow users to download those installers directly from its website until the faulty app is fixed, rather than letting us on our own to find solutions elsewhere.

[baz606]

Your device's make, model and OS version;

Android Galaxy A33 5G, 

Model SM-A336B/DSN

Android version 16 

The version of Spotify you're running;

9.1.68.1888

The troubleshooting you've tried so far.

Have reinstalled and cleared cache.

Spotify now becoming borderline unusable with long several second lag between songs on album unless I actively unlock my screen and enter the app.  Problems started several months ago with the totally unnecessary and pointless AI bloat.  There is no point having lots of features if the core functionality of playing songs is broken.  After being a user for so long this app is now trash sadly

[mikem834]

Brutally slow on Samsung A25 5G. Will switch to YT Music if this persists much longer 

Spotify version 9.1.68.1888

[mitchellsmith93]

Both the desktop app and the mobile app are completely unusable. It takes a full ten minutes for a playlist to load and another full ten minutes for it to start playing after you hit play. Literally nothing on the users end can fix this issue. For some reason this is not an issue on Spotify Web Player. So whatever you guys are doing there, you need to do to your apps, because this is truly unbelievable how bad it has gotten.

[mitchellsmith93]

ALSO I timed this just to see. I deleted a song from a playlist that took exactly 7 minutes and 37 seconds to load. Then it took 1 minute and 26 seconds for the song I deleted to actually delete from the playlist. WHAT IS GOING ON SPOTIFY WHAT ARE WE PAYING FOR

[thezombiekillr9]

@Yordan 

I hope spotify is genuinely removing bloat code & restructuring their code for optimizations & uphold STRICT optimizing tactics to keep the app from ever getting this bad again.

First it was the playlists only loading a select amount of songs before loading the rest & that still hasnt been fixed & flushed out, now it's performance issues. If spotify is competing to be the buggiest & slowest music app, I'm sure it's gonna win by a land slide. If this next performance update doesnt clear**bleep**, I will revoke my subscription & I wont be paying for premium. 
A14, V9.1.68.1888, my phone has 6GB of RAM, so there is no problem with my phone being capable of loading the app. If you need to remove developers that are just making bloat code & not trying to fix the app & keep it running smoothly & as quickly as possible, then remove them. We shouldn't be turning around every month to 6 months, coming to the forums because people aren't testing & criticizing performance to push the efficiency & speed to it's absolute limits.
I'm tired of companies just outright refusing to do jack due to greed & being complicit in what's going on. I was paying for spotify because it's the easiest & most convenient app to use. I will switch if it outright refuses to improve.

[violetcities]

I had an app update a few hours after I posted here yesterday, my version is now 9.1.72.1891, the problem remains the same.