3 Of The Most Common Customer Complaints About Spotify

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With over 293 million subscribers, Spotify is undoubtedly one of the biggest music streaming services in the world. However, being the biggest doesn’t mean that it is free from frustrations, and there are plenty of reasons some users might ditch Spotify entirely. Between unexpected app bugs, confusing subscription issues, and features that don’t always work as advertised, plenty of users have found themselves dealing with annoyances and even taking to online social media spaces to complain about the current state of the streaming service — with some going so far as to call it horrible outright.

From complaints about Spotify’s ability to surface new music to comments about how the service always seems to shuffle through the same songs despite users having more than a thousand options in their playlist, problems with Spotify aren’t exactly rare. I’ve even experienced some of my own annoyances with the service in the years that I’ve been using it. As more users flock to Spotify and the service continues to offer new features, these complaints change and even grow. So below, we’re highlighting some of the most common complaints that users have posted about in recent times.

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One of the biggest complaints that pops up online in talks about Spotify is how spotty the service’s shuffle feature tends to be. One user posted on Reddit, complaining that despite having 1,500 songs in a playlist, they feel like they hear the same 30 songs five days a week while commuting. Others commented on how the shuffle feature feels inferior compared to other apps out there, like Apple Music and even Deezer, noting that when they press a shuffle button, they don’t expect to hear the same songs multiple times.

The good news is, some users have reported finding a fix for this particular complaint. What many Premium users recommend is to head into Settings > Playback > Disable Smart Shuffle and turn on the Fewer Repeats option, which the company brought to the platform in 2025. The bad news is, not everyone has seen the same success with this change. While some say it improved their shuffle experience greatly, others have noted that they already had these features selected and they continue to hear the same songs over and over. I can confirm that enabling Fewer Repeats doesn’t always guarantee the shuffle function will actually be better, either, as I’ve had the option turned on for months and haven’t really noticed a positive difference compared to before turning it on.

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This is a bug that I ran into myself a few months ago, and it was quite frustrating to deal with. Essentially, this bug causes users with a Spotify Premium subscription to still receive advertisements even though they have an active subscription plan. I’m not the only person to ever experience this issue, either. Complaints have appeared online with users noting that Basic plan subscribers were receiving ads during playback, with some users even being locked out of choosing individual songs despite having Premium.

While one of the biggest, more recent outages of this type was resolved and Spotify advised users of that resolution on its forums, the fact that it has happened for several users over the years shows just how possible something like this is. When it does happen, Spotify has some troubleshooting steps you can try, like logging out and back in, but there’s no guarantee of a fix. In my case, even removing myself from the family plan and adding myself back didn’t work to resolve the issue.

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One of the other major complaints seen across online platforms when it comes to Spotify has to do with the service’s recommendations. The issue here appears to be a double-edged sword, as some users have complained that the recommendations only provide content like covers of songs they already have in their library, while others complain that they only see the same songs and bands popping up in their recommendations, no matter what they look for, making it hard to find new tracks to fall in love with.

These kinds of complaints have continued, though sometimes in different ways, for years now. And even though Spotify continues to introduce new features like an AI-powered DJ system and its various Discover-based playlists, many feel that recommendations fall short of where they should be, with Discover playlists often just including songs already saved to the user’s library. Some have even complained that Spotify’s algorithm and the way it handles recommendations have ruined their Spotify Wrapped, because it isn’t actually the songs they like; it’s just the songs that Spotify keeps feeding them.

Not everyone feels this way, though, as some users note that recommendations on Spotify have helped them increase their music tastes extensively. When I first started using the service, I was able to branch out quite a lot and very quickly. However, now that my liked songs have grown to well over 4,000 tracks, Spotify does appear to have a harder time recommending me new stuff I haven’t heard unless it’s full new releases.