(Web Desk) - Spotify is back online after going down for tens of thousands of people in a mystery outage – with listeners saying their apps have closed, and their music search and even albums disappearing altogether.

The app appears to have stopped working for music fans around the world for several hours, according to complaint trackers.

Outage tracker Down Detector has logged thousands of reports from listeners, including in the UK and US.

The bulk of the reports are linked to the Spotify app rather than the website.

“We’re aware of some recent issues that should be all clear now,” Spotify said in a statement.

"Thanks for your patience, you rock. If you still need help, head over to our Community.”

A Reddit thread about the outage has earned hundreds of upvotes.

One wrote: "I can't open playlists on my app, it just forces the app closed."

Another said: "Mine just keeps asking me to reload the page.

"But my saved music is playing. Just can't search anything new at the moment."

One frustrated user wrote: "Yep it just forced close all my playlists like they were being deleted."

And another music fan said: "Got a weird message first that I was offline then that the content could not be played in my region."

Spotify's official Community forums are also being flooded with user complaints.

One of the earliest posts about the issue, which appeared at around 1.30pm in the UK or 8.30am in NYC, complains of an "app crash".

The user said that their music "stopped mid-play" and everything that they search results in a "content not available" message.

Another user on the Spotify forums warned that their iOS app not working, which marks them as an iPhone owner.

"The app only displays the start page but does not load anything content like albums," the Spotify Community member said.

"The search function works though, but when clicking on a result it isn’t loading.

"My phone is connected to the internet and I didn’t change any firewall settings."

Other users were still able to use the app without issue.

On the Reddit post, one confused user said: "What's going on? My Spotify is working like normal."

And another posted: "I'm using it right now just fine? What is happening to you guys?"

Spotify appears to have come back online at around 4pm UK time or 11am NYC time.