Question about streaming while music is downloaded

[werepancake]

As a premium user I've enjoyed being able to listen to my music even while offline on my phone. Unfortunately, in order for all my music to fit on my phone (16gb) I have to download the music into Normal Quality (96 kbs). This is fine for when I do not have a strong wifi connection. However, when I am at home and have a strong wifi connection I would like to stream my music in extreme quality.

My question is, if I have a strong internet connection and have a song downloaded at normal quality and then play it while my streaming quality is set to extreme, will the song play at normal or extreme quality? Is there an option to toggle this?

Thanks in advance,

werepancake

[Joe]

The quality settings for streaming and downloading are seperate so, theoretically, you should be able to stream in extreme quality and download in nprmal. The only thing I would add is that spotify caches music you stream on your device so streaming in extreme quality may actually impact on your free storage space anyway. Just something to watch out for.

[werepancake]

So are you saying that when I play my music that is downloaded in normal quality and have an internet connection, the songs are actually streamed corresponding to whatever quality I set streaming to (extreme in my case)?

I will give an example in case I'm not being clear: I have Song A downloaded onto my phone with normal quality. I also have streaming set to extreme quality. I am in an area with a strong internet connection and want to listen to Song A. When I hit play, does my phone stream the song or play the downloaded version? In other words, do I hear the song in normal or extreme quality?

I feel this question is important because what if someone had the opposite problem I have? They might have all their music downloaded in extreme quality but set streaming quality to normal because of lousy internet. Would spotify revert to streaming while they have an active connection, meaning that this person has to listen to lower quality music?

Maybe there should be an option to toggle between streaming or playing the downloaded version of a song while the user is connected to the internet.

And thanks for the tip on the spotify cache, I hadn't thought of that.

[Joe · Accepted solution]

As I said above "The quality settings for streaming and downloading are seperate so, theoretically, you should be able to stream in extreme quality and download in nprmal.". I used the word "theoretically" because spotify will try to conserve bandwidth and not stream music you already have downloaded but, as I understand it,  it will only do so if you are playing a song at the same or worse quality to that which you have downloaded.

You could probably test this by creating a copy of one of your offline playlists and switching to flight mode while you are listening to it.

Spotify will not stream tracks which are already available offline in extreme quality but will play the downloaded tracks instead.

[werepancake]

Thanks!

That's what I was looking for. It is a bummer though because it would be nice to stream in higher quality. Hopefully Spotify will add that feature sometime.