Sorry, this is odd I left the URL non region specific it should have taken you directly to the proper language page based on your ISP webserver info, not sure how that happened.
Anyway I going to be short and sweet with this 4 points as I do not want to write 4 chapters in detail. LoL
1. Explains this process
Offline - Means a user who has a permium membership can download music streaming tracks for offline use for up to 30 days before the content has to be brought back online to update music licenses and also to get play counts to pay royalties. To off line in the spotify desktop app, a user must be a permium subscriber and should also go to Preferences in the spotify desktop app upper left under EDIT, scroll down to PLAYBACK, and check mark the box that says High Quality Streaming, log out of the app and back in to reset the app settings for high quality streaming. Then the user selects music in the service by searching for what they like and adds it to playlists they create. Once the playlists are created, click on the playlist names and use the toggle switch on the playlist top bar to the far right that says offline, move the slider to the right and let the tracks be downloaded. Green download marks will appear next to each track as they are downloaded. Give it some time if you have allot of tracks, can take time based on ISP speeds and how many tracks there are in the playlist. Users are allowed to download music service tracks up to 3,333 tracks per device and up to 3 devices per account. 3X3333=9999 tracks total that can be downloaded to all three devices per account.
For android and iOS devices you will have to do some board searching for all the ins and outs to offline for those devices. I did my due for the windows desktop. LoL But the same basic idea works in the android app when you find your playlists and click on them, there is an offline toggle to do just that.
2. Tells me what exactly is being downloaded (is it a spotify file or a real music file - if so what type?)
What is being download is an actual music file that is encrypted with time limited music listening license for 30 days. This file is of the same sound quality as an mp3 from amazon.com, or M4a downloaded from iTunes, as long as the user has selected high quality streaming, so a user can be sure to download the music tracks, the music files are in 320 kbps in Ogg Vorbis format. What is Ogg and Vorbis?
3. Is this going to take up all the storage on my phone?
Yes storage space is taken up as you are downloading an actual music file it is just encrypted with the time license. How much memory is used, well I would use common mp3 file average size of a five minute track in 128 kbps which is around 4.63mb, so naturally a 320 kbps five minute song is going to be more. For example I used the spotify desktop app to sync about 150 songs of my local music files and it come out to about 1.6 gigs. So try estimates from this, but take it the 320 kbps which adds to file size for the higher bitrate. What you could do is create a 100 track playlist on the spotify desktop app and then offline the playlist and do some pre figuring of where the appdata is stored at of the spotify app, and then check again after the 100 tracks have been downloaded to get an idea how much memory is needed for 100 tracks of 320kbps spotify content files.
4.How do I remove it or select what I want on the phone?
Again need to do a search based on your phone type. Android has the ability to offline music files from playlists you create and ones you follow. You can also offline Albums saved under Albums in Your Music, you can also offline individual songs from Songs under Your Music. Anything you download should have a toggle to offline or an option to download, simply switching this toggle from offline to online takes the playlist back to online and the music files will get updated again in 30 days. If you want them gone right then looking for the spotify app and finding the clear cache options and using the clear cache while logged off the app removes all download tracks. You just must make sure to return all offline resources to online so the app will not start to download it all again for offline use. A phone shut down and restart helps here as well. Start the spotify phone app up again and you are back to ready to fill up again. Again a search of the forums for ideas how to do this can help.
I think I covered everything, and three of these questions could have been answered from that solutions help page URL I gave you. Also an hour of doing some keyword searches here on the board would have provided plenty of information all of your points and answered all of your questions, good thing I am just listening to tunes and doing this, allowed me to finish listening to my Opeth Discography playlist, which you can follow if you go to my spotify profile link in my signature and then look for Opeth in my public playlist listings. LoL. Anyway good luck, and the search can be your friend.
Staff / Moderator/ 2 years ago in Social & Random