Spotify on iOS preloads a lot of songs

[Eduardboon]

I have been using the Spotify app on iOS 9 for a while and whenever I start a playlist the app seems to pre-load 3 songs. So when I'm playing one song and kill the mobile data I can still listen to the next two tracks.

This is something I don't like, since I skip a lot of tracks whenever I'm browsing a new playlist. I can use up to 200mb by listening to 10 songs because of this.

In my experimentation I have found that turning of gapless playback removes this feature. The app only loads the current track. By enabling crossfading the app still has gapless playback.

Can anyone confirm that gapless playback loads 3 songs to your phone instead of just the one that's playing?

I would be fine with the app downloading the next song in the last 10 seconds, but not immediately after starting playback.

Edit: it seems as if even with gapless disabled the app preloads 3-4 songs. This is incredibly annoying since I'm on a 3gb plan and want to stream discover playlists on the bike and in the car. But I rarely finish a playlist so 2-3 songs will be downloaded for nothing.

160kbps should be 75mb per hour, I have used 300mb in an hour today, which checks out if the app keeps loading 4 songs instead of one (75x4=300). Why can I not disable this? I cannot burn through my data like this, since I need it for other stuff as well.
Information on this preloading is incredibly hard to find. So I'm hoping I'll get an answer and a solution here.

The data usage for Spotify shown in the attachment is for today only, as is the battery usage. You can see that 1,3 hours of usage nets me 300mb usage.

Edit2: as described in my reply, the data usage didn't stop with gapless play turned off, so I have changed the title. My guess is that there is a feature that allows the app to preload a few songs so that even when the mobile connection is spotty, you can still listen to at least 15 minutes of music. It is, in my opinion, however a waste of data to preload so many songs. I would sincerely like an option to turn this feature off so that I don't burn through data unnecessarily.

[feelikeastrangr]

Hey there @Eduardboon hope I can be of help here. 

Sounds like you're well-versed on Spotify's mobile listening capabilities but I found this thread in the Community which might be of help:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Community-Blog/Preview-release-Spotify-Desktop-0-8-5-Gaples...

Maybe the best solution is also the most obvious one...have you tried saving for offline listening your Discover playlists while on wifi, so you don't incur a crazy data charge? 

[Eduardboon]

Hi, thank you for your reply!

I have downloaded a lot of music to my phone and those songs work as intended. They do not use up any data.

I have since yesterday discovered that the app uses this feature even with gapless play and cross-fading turned off, so I should change the title of this thread.

My gripe is with the feature that pre-loads a few tracks instead of just downloading the track you're listening to. I frequently like to listen to new music or spotify's playlists under the discover tab. Most of the time away from wifi. When imlistening for 30 minutes continuously it's not really a problem since I'll probably finish the playlist. But for shorter bursts it's a bit annoying to have songs downloaded that I won't be listening to. It's like you HAVE TO listen to st least 4 songs to normalise the data usage, because after preloading the first few it just preloads a new one after the current song is finished.

I understand that for a caching solution this can come in handy, though the cache is wiped when I close Spotify or start another demanding task on my phone. So those songs still in the cache need to be redownloaded anyway.

In my specific case the feature is even worse; I tend to browse through a lot of playlists to see if there is something I like. When Spotify keeps downloading the next few songs that'll just use a lot of data. I don't really want to pre-emptively download random playlist to mitigate this.

Our carriers advertise with 75mb is usage per hour for most streaming services, so it's a bit annoying that Spotify uses up 3 times that amount while Apple Music neatly falls into the 75mb/h category. I don't want to switch, however, since I've been using Spotify for years and on many different devices.

[Eduardboon]

I have since switched to Apple Music so I can listen to music while running and leaving my phone at home, therefore this issue has been solved.

[Milint33w]

It is obvious that you marked this as solved out of sarcasm and spite. If possible, it would be nice if you could unsolve it, because the rest of us are still suffering from this horrible preloading feature. All they need is a "dont preload more songs" feature. This is desperately needed. It blows my mind that spotify decided that they should force you to use 3 or 4 times as much data when looking for new music on the road. The majority of their users have 4G and can instantly download an entire song without worrying about buffering.