Spotify causing severe battery drain on iPhone 6S running iOS 10

[jack_206]

This was an issue on iOS 9 and still seems to be happening on iOS 10. Spotify is using 3x more battery than any other app and accounts for about 50% of all battery usage. This never used to be an issue, and I don't understand what it could possibly be doing that is so resource-hungry. Most of my listening is via saved songs on my offline playlist, so it isn't a mobile data issue.

Anyone know how to resolve this? A music player should not be impacting device battery life like this.

Edit Oct 11 2016: Adding a screenshot since this doesn't seem to be getting any traction with Spotify. I unplugged 4 hours ago and my battery is at 13%. And 46% of my battery has been used by Spotify over the last 24 hours.

[OgreArmor]

I can easily say that my battery was never the cause of the problem. After a  few days of dealing with the severe drainage, I restored a backup of my phone that had an older version of spotify installed. Spotify went from 71% usage (shown in my previous post) to 15%. Seeing that percentage so low now still feels like a miracle lol.

I'm sure the batteries are causing problems for plenty of people, especially since apple can't seem to make a decent one to begin with, but the app itself also has a definite issue that the devs don't seem too concerned about fixing.

[jack_206]

Yeah, even if it's a hardware issue, it's a hardware issue that only presents when I have Spotify running, so...who knows. Regardless, Spotify's silence about this when they are actively replying to nearly every other thread in this forum is...weird.

[123965863]

I hate to go all conspiracy theorist on you guys, but could this be some form of sabotage on Apple's part?  Heres some fishy things to think about:

• In recent months Apple has been unreasonably trying to block Spotify updates in their app store.
• This seems to be an issue exclusive to iPhones, more particularly iPhones running on the latest versions of IOS. 
• Spotify has promptly responded to many issues on this forum. However, Spotify hasn't acknowledged this problem or responded to any of the threads regarding this issue. (Perhaps because they don't know what Apple has done to cause the issue, and as a result don't currently know how to fix it).

Just some thoughts from a frustrated Spotify user with a dead iPhone.

[manolo_berlin]

New iPhone 7, same issue. Therefore unlikely related to hardware.

[AndreasV47]

I have exactly the same problem. I use an iPhone 7, iOS 10.2. I can verify that 'use' isn't the issue. Actual listening was maybe 45 minutes (Downloaded songs mind you), but the app was using juice in the background for 4.2 hours. Racking up 27% battery drain. I simply don't close the app. (Apple says that isn't a problem, because their memory and power management is so great.)

!! Warning: conspiracy theory ahead !!
Wasn't apple's own music streaming service introduced in 2015 (with iOS 9)? About the same time this started happening... Apple isn't known for playing nice. They already put pressure on Spotify last year. Forcing them to use Apple's billing system instead of there own by blocking an update to the app. And apple has absolute control over iOS core features. Maybe the Spotify app has a disadvantage on the os level because it's 3rd party. (But I'm not a dev, so chime in if you want.)

[AndreasV47]

I harbor the same suspicion. This problem even started in 2015 I believe, the same year Apple introduced their own music streaming service.

[smev]

Been having massive battery drain on the iphone 7 plus with latest updates. Was only listening about 15 mins per day.... I solved the problem.

[Werdnawk98]

Trying closing the app when not using it. It could also be that you have been downloading a lot. This can cause you're battery to drain. If you don't listen to anthing anymore than you should consider removing it. Keeping battry saver on should help too.

[ashaw953]

Okay, smev, I'll bite... is your implication that you solved the problem by deleting Spotify??

Andy

[jack_206]

@smev, that's hilarious

[smev]

It seems Spotify uses the Ogg Vorbis codec which I don't believe uses hardware assisted decoding on the iPhone. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Hardware codecs on iphone are: AAC, ALAC, HE-AAC, MP3.

Could be that the software codec implementation of egg vorbis on the iphone is not playing nice with the cpu ?

Decoding 320kbps on the "extreme" setting with software decoders might be hard on the cpu/battery. I'm curious to know how many people here have their settings cranked ?

Either way something is wrong, it uses 5x the battery of any other music app. The others I can leave playing for hours with almost no battery use at all.

[jack_206]

Yep, my whole library is Extreme quality. That is a heck of a theory.

[smev]

I don't see why anyone with a recent phone wouldn't have it set to extreme. I guess someone needs to redownload their music at the "recommended" setting to confirm this. If thats the case it's a little ridiculous not being able to run 320kbps, you know its not 1982 anymore.

[kevmartian]

I think the Ogg Vorbis theory is the best one on this thread.  Makes sense with the offline listening still draining battery, and with why Spotify is the lone audio app I have that drains the battery so fast.  Maybe the iOS 10 update has a bug that exacerbates the problem, because I didn't notice it until the iOS update.

[nomarsirhc1991]

So I am a new Spotify user. I am testing Spotify on my iPad. Now, here is my 2 cents. As you can see from the screen shot, Spotify is using the same percentage of battery as Modern Combat 5 in about the same amount of time. Now how can this be? MC5 Is extremely CPU heavy 3D game. Spotify is a music streaming app. No 3D Graphics, just music playing. Like seriously, how can this be? Well, i think you guys are right. I think apple is playing some sort of sick joke, and probably doing sabotage somewhere in the code. They did have a disagreement over billing, so this could be a possibility. OR maybe the devs did just make a mistake and perhaps over looked some code somewhere in the Spotify app. Who knows? But I think there will probably be a fix soon, because this kind of battery usage is fairly unacceptable. And it's also suspicious, because "Apple Music" happens to be extremely efficient. I'll tell you what though... if the problem doesn't get solved within my 30 day trial, probably going back to Apple Music. That, or just sell my iPad, and get a Microsoft surface, or go back to laptop computing again. Cause lately, I'm very tired of being limited. I really switched to Spotify for the EQ. Why cant apple release a custom EQ for their music player?? You know they could, but they want to be some sort of huge douche and not do this for some odd reason. I'll tell you what though, if someone uncovers some sort of code sabotage on apples part, I will just say bye to apple altogether. My apple stuff is nice, but android definitely has come a long way since i last used it in 2010. And last time i checked, apple hardware has decent resale value

[gobbluth777]

I just switched over from Deezer and thought everything would be better now but I'm also plagued by this issue. Deezer's battery usage never was an issue and so I'm kind of buying into the Vorbis theory since Deezer uses AAC. I also have set download to 320kbit.

This needs to get sorted out. Neither Deezer nor Apple Music are a viable alternative for me at this point.

[AndreasV47]

While it seems like a genuin proposition, I have only used normal quality (automatic option), which streams and dowloads 96kbit, and I have the same issue.

This can be tested very easily though. Could anyone with this problem turn down their quality for a few days or week and report back on their battery drain?? That would clear this up. We do need quite a few people doing this to get a good sample though. Thanks in advance.

I hope it solves some people's problems. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be mine.

P.s. I will turn quality up to see if it makes my battery drain worse.

[gobbluth777]

If missing hardware decoding capabilites are the issue then I'd assume that the problem affects all quality settings, only in varying degrees.

[Lazyboy1982]

Same issues for me on iphone 6s. I think Apple are behind it in order to et people to switch over to Apple Music. Seriously contemplating a Samsung. I don't think it's Spotify to blame here but they could at least reply to our concerns here. Are their customers not important to them???

[jack_206]

Yeah, it's baffling to me that there are moderator responses to every single other thread in this forum, but not this one with 8+ pages of documentation and reporting. Like if nothing else a "thanks guys, we'll escalate this and see if there's any official word" would be appreciated.