Extremely high data usage on iphone

[therealmeat]

Since April, I have been experiencing a huge spike in data usage due to the spotify premium app on my iphone.  This never used to be an issue, and my listening habits have not changed.  I stream on my phone for maybe 20-30 minutes a day.  This should not be happening.  My phone bill was an extra $90 last month because of this.  

For context, my data usage in March was 1.9 GB.  Last month it was 14 GB.  As I said, NOTHING has changed in terms of my listening habits.   What is going on and how do I fix it?   It would be great if I could speak to a human being about this, but I can't seem to find a customer service number for spotify anywhere.   Compounding my frustration is the fact that any technical support email I send takes a full day to get a response, and they rarely even acknowledge the issue I'm having.    

I have an iphone 6.  I have spotify version 5.7.0 on my phone, and had the previous version prior to.  I have stream quality on Normal.  I only download via wifi.  I just did a statistic reset on the phone to track usage...haven't even listened to a song yet and i'm already at 2.7 MB of usage.  

[jfert]

Are you certain that it's Spotify that is causing this spike in data usage?  If so there could be a problem with your account, in which case I could help you get in touch with one of their customer support workers.  A large spike in data usage could be caused by moving or having unreliable wi-fi.

One thing that Apple has on their phones is called "Wi-Fi Assist".  This setting makes it to where if there is wi-fi in the area, but it's weak, then cellular data comes in and boosts the download speeds.  You can turn this off on your iPhone by going to settings>Cellular>scroll down to the very bottom>flip the switch that says "Wifi Assist".

I hope this helps, and please reply if you require any further assistance.

jfert

[Swanny]

Hey @therealmeat, there was an issue a month or so ago with Spotify briefly using quite a lot of mobile data for no apparent reason. The issue was resolved though. Can you try resetting your stats under Settings > Mobile, then use it for a few days and see how your usage goes?

If you're still having issues, the only other thing I can suggest is saving music offline, then using it in Offline mode.

[therealmeat]

yeah, it's definitely due to spotify, as i rarely stream from other apps.  i have the statistic logs and phone data breakdown to prove it.  i just disabled the wifi assist, so hopefully that helps a bit (thanks).  i only use the phone for spotify when i walk to work and when i drive on the weekends, otherwise i stream on wifi via my computer. my usage prior to april hovered between 2 GB and 6 GB every month, and the wifi assist was always activated, so i'm not sure if this is what's causing it.  

spotify support's only advice was to open and close the app twice, so i did that this morning.   i then reset my stats log to track usage and walked to work while using the app.  20 minutes of streaming, 48 MB of usage.  is that normal?  

[Swanny]

@therealmeat what streaming quality do you have it set to?

[therealmeat]

normal speed.   i just tried downloading all of my playlists to my phone over wifi so i could avoid streaming, but of course you can only download 3333 songs per device.   

after using the app to and from work today, i'm at 90MB of data usage.  total of about 35 minutes of play time.  is that where it should be at a normal stream quality speed?  

[Swanny]

Were you playing songs that were saved offline, or were these songs actually streaming?

[therealmeat]

today i only did streaming because i wanted to get a read on usage.  haven't tried the stored songs yet.

[Swanny]

Yeah I'd say 90 MB over 35 minutes is a bit higher than average, but probably not high enough to deem it as an issue. The extra MB could easily be explained away by extra data being sent back to Spotify's servers, or even just the album art.

I'd definitely say just try saving some songs offline, that should definitely help to reduce teh data usage.

[BuffMuse30]

Were you ever able to get this issue figured out? I just started having the same issue this month and talked to a customer service agent in a chat, but they sent my query to the "escalation department" and said I would receive an email response in 24 horus. In the first 4 days of my new billing cycle I burned through 50% of my family's 16GB data plan. When I turned off cellular acces for every app for several days my phone used almost 0 data. Then I tried starting with spotify (since its the app I use most); when I turned cellular data acces back on for the app it burned through 2 GB of data in just over 2 hours. I know I can save songs to my phone, but as you poin out there is a limit to that. And lately when I do use wifi my app crashes constantly.

[DDJ]

Same problem here - I have had to turn cellular data off for Spotify. The problem occurrs even when listening to dowloaded playlists.

[kellte2]

They pushed out an update to my iphone last night, but I am still seeing data usage on offline synced playlists.  I'm attempting to reinstall and will report back.

[kellte2 · Accepted solution]

Reinstalled and resynced my downloaded playlists.  Still uses cellurlar data to play previously downloaded songs.  I brought this to the attention of @SpotifyCares on twitter and they made a tweak to my cache and asked me delete the app and reinstall.  Did this again, but the problem persists.  This needs to be fixed.

[DDJ]

Thanks for your efforts kellte2. For me the App is unuseable if cellular data is on - it uses about 1GB/hour even if I am listening to offline playlists. Hope there is a fix ASAP.

[jackstark]

Ditto on the extremely high data usage on my iphone 5. Spike in my usage just happened in last billing period. I used up my monthly data plan allottment inside one week with no change in my listening habits. I'm also experiencing screen bleed from the app with the green fingerprint spotify app background clearly visible even when I'm not using the app. What is causing this?