Mobile data usage with Cellular downloading OFF and Data saver ON

[beeaitch]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Samsung S10e

Operating System

Android 10

My Question or Issue

Got a message this morning from my cell carrier that I had used half of my 1GB data plan.  Considering my plan reset yesterday, on the 1st, it means I had blown through more than half of my data in 36 hours.  I checked the data usage and it revealed that spotify had used 678 MB of mobile data in under 36 hours.  This is in spite of Data Saver being turned ON and Cellular downloading turned OFF. 

Most of the day yesterday I was home with wifi coverage.  I did go into my office for a few hours in the evening, but I also have wifi there.  I only live 4 miles from the office so my roundtrip, especially on a sunday night, is only about 20 minutes.  This morning when I received the data notice I was working from home.  I will concede that I did not enable offline mode during this period, but given the settings above I should not need to to prevent mobile data usage. 

What could cause spotify to use so much data with those settings?

I have a by the GB data plan on my phone so this sort of activity is a problem.  This already means I'll likely be on the hook for an extra GB this month.  I am a recent refugee from google play music shutting down, and I thought that spotify would be my new service.  Unfortunately, if this type of data usage persists I will be looking elsewhere.

[Mario]

Hey @beeaitch,

Thanks for writing about this here in the Community.

Just to double-check, did you already try a clean reinstall of the app (as opposed to a quick one) together with restarting your phone?

If there's any temporary error, following those steps should do the trick. It'd be great if you also make sure you're on the latest Android (11.0) before testing this again.

Let us know how you get on.

Cheers!

[beeaitch]

Although a clean install is always a bad solution because it will wipe all downloaded music, I did perform a clean install because this was one of two problems I've been troubleshooting.  Unfortunately, the clean install did not resolve the problem. 

Working from home right now, I haven't had many chances to test spotify on mobile data.  Eventually, I had to go get groceries so I turned off Offline Mode and headed to the store.  Even though my phone appeared to be connected to an Xfinity hotspot while at the store, when I checked the data usage, it had already eaten through 165 MB of data.  Fortunately, I was able to turn on Offline Mode mode and stop the bleeding before it exceeded my monthly data allotment, although it did get very close.   

As to your suggestion that I update to android 11, that is clearly another apple-centric response that I have found far too common from spotify.  Android 11 was first released on Sept. 8, and updates haven't been released for most android phones.   

[Jeremy]

Hey there @beeaitch,

Thank you for your reply.

Can you try to log in with another account - such as a friend's or a family member's to see if the issue persists?

Also - it would be great if you can let us know which version of the app you have.

We'll keep an eye out for your reply 🙂

Cheers!