I had just given up and figured it was just the way the app worked with traditional hard drives (because the app was as slick running as ever on my personal solid state MacBook Pro at home). I've tried every half assed solution offered up by Spotify and the problem persisted.
10 minute start-ups, blank black app window screens, search never loading, etc. For about half a year, the Spotify desktop app (at work on a hard drive based iMac) has had horrendous performance issues.
