Data Usage

[nolio]

Right folks, so I pretty much use Spotify every day on my iPhone.. I have a 1GB monthly contract.

However, if I spend any decent amount of time listening to music on Spotify (normally to and from work) my data usage seems to expire after 10/15 or so days.

Now, I have just this very moment changed my streaming from 320-Kbit/s to 96Kbit/s.. So will this make much of a difference to the amount of songs I can stream in a month? And if so, will there be a large difference in the quality of sound?

Would 160Kbit/s be a sort of happy medium between the amount of songs I can stream and the quality of sound?

Just looking for as much information as I can on the subject!

Also, a bit of an odd question but does anyone out there know how long it actually takes to stream a song on Spoitfy???

Cheers!

[Joe · Accepted solution]

Hi. I moved your post into the iOS section so it doesn't get lost.

To answer your questions,

1. Streaming at 96 kbps will give you 3.3333 times as much music as 320kbps for the same data usage.

2. Only you can judge the quality as much depends on the listener and the end equipment but I'd say that the difference will be pretty noticable and 160kbps may be a good compromise. Listen and decide for yourself.

3. I'm not sure why you ask the last question. If you have a solid LTE connection, it will finish streaming long before you finish listening to it I guess.

You do know that you can also download music over wifi before leaving home to save on data bandwidth?

[Peter__ · Accepted solution]

Just doing some brief maths for you, this is assuming you have 1GB of data purely for Spotify just to make the calculations easier and ignores data caching which might occur if you listen to tracks more than once:

At 96kbps you can stream ~ 24 hours of content.

At 160kbps you can stream ~ 14.5 hours of content. 

At 320kbps you can stream ~ 7.25 hours of content. 

As Joe said above, synching tracks into offline mode whilst on WiFi is a good plan if you listen more than that!

Peter

[nolio]

Cheers for the reply!

This is the reason as to why I asked about how long it would take to stream a song.

On review, I'd say I could live with dropping the kbit/s rate down to 160 instead of 96!

[nolio]

Yea, I used to sync my music when spotify was first introduced as an app, but I found that (for whatever reason) it used to have an impact on my overall memory on my iPhone so I didn't bother my arse after that!

I suppose a decent shout would be to sync what I'm currently listening to (Father John Misty, Peter Green & Duane Allman for the record) and then when I fancy a change, I can just de-sync right?

[Peter__]

---

@nolio wrote:

Yea, I used to sync my music when spotify was first introduced as an app, but I found that (for whatever reason) it used to have an impact on my overall memory on my iPhone so I didn't bother my arse after that!

I suppose a decent shout would be to sync what I'm currently listening to (Father John Misty, Peter Green & Duane Allman for the record) and then when I fancy a change, I can just de-sync right?

---

Yes, the Spotify application will manage its offline cache automatically for you. 

Peter

[baribob]

I have a 6gb/month family plan with 3 smart phones, and two spotify mobile users.   My daughters iphone just gobbled over 7GB of data use via spotify in 8 days, and put us over our data limit to the tune of $75.    I'm not an ios user, but settings look normal, data quality is set to normal, I can't find any songs that have been cached.   WTF?   Any one else?    7GB!!!    I use streaming spotify every single day on Android and never go over 1GB in my 30 day billing cycle.

[Peter__]

Is she listening to offline playlists? 

[user-removed]

Hi matey,

I had this exact same problem then realised that of course its going to gobble data *facepalm*.

Luckily for me I'm a student so used my student discount to get Premium for £5/month and then just simply have one playlist that I update with songs I'm currently listening to and Spotify handles syncing everything (better than iTunes I might add).

Have a lovely Christmas!

[baribob]

Your math calculation is consistence with my testing.  Streaming on my android phone at 'normal' 96kbps averages 40MB/hr.   Equivalent to 24 hrs/GB.

But my daughters' iphone 5 began gobbling data.  She just measured and its using almost 1GB/hour at the 96kbps rate.  Thats 25X more data consumption.     We've uninstalled and reinstalled the application, still massive data use.

[teCHology]

I didnt really notice a lot of usage until i left my Unlimited data plan with AT&T. I have 20GB shared plan now with 4 iPhones and 1 iPad. But i noticed today that after a 3hr car ride to and from vacation that my data usage went really HIGH.....My wifes iphone 4 (not LTE) used 20MB a minute while listening to spotify....This came out to be over 3GB in just hours....Thats CRAZY....I cannot seem to figure out why.....Al the settings are set to normal 96kbps which if the math is done right. At 96kbps would be 42MB a hour at that bitrate....Even at 320kbps it would only be 140MB in an hour.....NO where near 1GB.......I will be canceling just for this reason alone....

[TrevorBradley]

This is the message I sent customer service about 15 min ago,

Hello,
  I am an avid Spotify user, I use Spotify at least once a day. Between Jan1 and Jan3 I was surprised to find that my data usage had spiked a MASSIVE 7.06GB. That's in a matter of 3 days. I am part of a business plan that cannot go over 10GB I reached that by myself while the other 4 people combined didn't achieve even 1GB. None of them use Spotify. My account was charged an overage fee and our maximum data usage for the month of January is GONE. I've seen on other forums and sites that I am not the only person who experienced this. I will be contacting Verizon to let them know what happened, if something isn't done about this you can bet I will be canceling my subscription and all my future recommendations will now become warnings not to use this application. I severely hope I am contacted back about this situation because in my opinion your feedback system isn't very efficient. It took me 15min just to find this page so I could "submit a recommendation". Not cool. I will continue to look for other ways to contact you about this situation. Thank you.

[dickyjacobs]

TrevorBradley your ignorance is neigh. You must understand that Spotify is a STREAMING service? If thats too much to ask then I'd advise you not to bother using Spotify every again. Please re search things before flaming things up in the forum. Not Spotify's fault AT ALL, this is your own doing.

[Peter__]

Just FYI due to continuing reports of Spotify on iOS using an excessive amount of data (more than normal for streaming even at extreme quality), I have opened it as a bug with the Spotify team. If you could all add your details to this bugs topic. 

So we can keep reports going to the same place, I am going to lock this topic for the time being. Thanks guys!