Spotify 'back and functioning normally' after global outage

Spotify says it has fixed an outage that left tens of thousands of users around the world unable to stream music on the app.

The firm said the platform was now "back up and functioning normally".

Spotify has not explained what caused the problems, but it had earlier said reports of a "security hack" were "completely inaccurate".

Downdetector, which tracks problems with online services, showed 20,000 people reported Spotify was not working at around 13:30 GMT Wednesday.

Spotify says it has more than 675 million users worldwide.

During the outage users reported they were still able to play music they had downloaded onto their device, however they were unable to view artists or use the search function on the app.

After trying to search for music, the app appeared to time out and displayed a message reading "something went wrong" with a refresh button.

"We're aware of some issues right now and are checking them out," the firm wrote on social media in response to rising complaints from users.

On social media a number of users told the company they were unhappy with the outage, and the impact the loss of music was having.

One urged the platform to hurry up and fix the issue as they were at the gym, while another pleaded for a quick fix as the loss of music was disrupting their revision.

More significantly, some said they would switch to rival streaming platforms such as YouTube or Apple Music.