Ridiculous Data Usage

[xemeru]

Spotify uses way to much data for iOS to the point it will cost me overage charges if I don't uninstall the app, in the 4 days I've had this new iphone spotify has used 2.6 gb of data and about 90% of the streaming I have done is through albums I downloaded at home on wifi. This is absolutely unacceptable if it is a bug. I had a galaxy s6 previously and the app worked wonderfully. I had no issues with it whatsoever, if there isn't a known fix I will most likely cancel my spotify subscription.

Streaming anything on spotify

1. I got a new iPhone
2. I installed spotify 5.3.0
3. I also did this

What steps you’ve tried already: Turning off background usage, verified that cellular sync was disabled.

Your device and operating system (e.g. iPhone 5, iOS 😎 iPhone 6s  iOS 9.3.1

Type of Spotify account you have (Free or Premium): Premium

The app version of Spotify you’re using: 5.3.0

[Craigski]

Welcome to the club.  I've been going backwards and forwards with Support over this.  This is what I've observed on mine.

• If you are on cellular and you mark a playlist to be "available offline", AND you have "download using cellular" set to no, AND you are streaming from that playlist, Spotify will ignore your settings and randomly download other tracks from that playlist.  There will be no indication they are downloading.  You'll just notice little green arrows appearing.
• If you play a downloaded track, Spotify seems to ignore that it is downloaded and stream it instead.
• And my personal favourite.  If are on WiFi and you mark a playlist to be "available offline", Spotify will download it over Cellular.  Even though you are connected to WiFi.  This one blows my mind because I didn't think it was possible.

For me these all appeared after the last update on April 6th.  Support has had me doing a few things, and they've given me a test account to use so they can monitor when I do tests.  But so far nothing has changed.  You might want to put in a support request.

[xemeru]

I'm not sure where to put in a support request could you link that here for me please? I've just switched to apple music which uses an average of 3-5 MB per song. Not 100 MB per song like spotify did.

[Craigski]

Yes, I did find it a bit of a clickfest to find it.  There may be an easier way and I just wandered in the wrong direction.

https://support.spotify.com/us/contact-spotify-support/

But if you take a look at a thread called 'very high data usage', it would appear the problem has been fixed.  You need to force restart Spotify a few times to ensure you have it.  I had uninstalled, so the fix didn't apply to me.  I just reinstalled

Here is the post where then instructions were shared.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-iOS-iPhone-iPad/Very-high-data-usage/m-p/1331582#M59115