Spotify data storage size on iPhone

[SR_Penny]

I recently installed Spotify on my iPhone 5s (iOS 7.1.1) and have a premium subscription. It's been running fine, but one thing I have noticed is that the app is taking up approx 0.5GB of space on the phone (I noticed this as I have just ran out of space on the device).

The app itself is only about 40MB and I only have one album saved for offline play. I don't have any playlists created or anything.

Does anyone know how/why it's taking up so much space on the phone?

Many thanks,

Steve

[Willcdowdy]

You can create a playlist for songs that you like and want to download. In that way you won't have to download the whole album.
I do this with the new songs I like each month. I put them in my playlist and since the playlist is already set to available offline, it downloads the song immediately.

Additionally, if you are looking at the album and not the new playlist, the song appears as downloaded as well, so you don't have to find it through the playlist (though you will have to find it in the proper album of it appears on more than one recording in the artists' catalog)

[setectastronomy]

This still ins't fixed.  Spotify eats up every bit of space I have until my phone no longer functions even such that I can't upgrade my apps.

Last time I had to delete it was using 1.5 GB.

It's disgraceful that they haven't fixed this!

[Leespursholland]

I've had Spotify premium now for 5 years so my storage is up to nearly 2g with 600 downloaded playlist songs. If I reinstall will all the catch stuff go and free up my phone somewhat?

[gdreisen]

This is still opened and is totally frustrating. I've been marking playlists for "offline" and have none left, but my phone continues to complain about lack of space. I finally deleted Spotify and regained 7.7GB (SEVEN!!!). 

[kovoor · Accepted solution]

The Spotify iOS app is seriously in need of a button to Clear the Cache.

It’s utterly stupid that Spotify having over 100 million total listeners all over the world has no solution to this other than having both of us delete the app and reinstall every f****** time.

Moreover, I have a 16GB iPhone 5. I know, I should upgrade, but with Apple giving us no options to clear the cache of any of its apps, its just downright unfair. (if you're an Android user and you're reading this, then you're pretty lucky)

So far I have only found these 8 ways to reduce Spotify's storage on iPhone to work with my iPhone 5 16GB..

Here's the guide guys, I hope it helps you guys too! 🙂

8 Ways to Reduce Spotify's Storage on iPhone

[Edwoodt]

Installed Spotify yesterday 40mb data added after an hour. At the end of the afternoon 350mb. Go to iTunes rent a film with at least 4gb more then your total available space. You pay nothing. iOS will clean your phone for you and tell you to go to settings to find more space. You will find you already have up to 3gb more space available. Now look at Spotify. All that data is gone.
PS google this process if you don't believe me.

[user-removed]

When my iphone ran out of storage, I was deleting my videos, pictures, then apps, and finally forced to do a factory restore to get this huge chunk of unidentified storage back. Two weeks later, out of storage... who's the culprit app... Spotify -- and it's already back up to 4.75GB.

Quick Google search turns up this page from 2012!!! with hundreds of people complaining of the same issue. FIVE YEARS AGO. And the best part... the thread is marked "Solved." Well... five years later, I'm here to tell you that it's not solved.

I'd expect this from a free app. But come on Spotify, you guys have millions of subscribers PAYING and you can't FIX THE IPHONE APP???

[andre_rivaldi]

Save the album you want, and then remove the specific song on album that you don't want to download by slide to left (on iOS). After that, click download the rest of the song that you didn't remove. That's the other way to download an individual song.

[montezumacats]

"SOLVED"?!?!? What a joke.

August 2017, and STILL the only "solution" is delete and reinstall. Pathetic. 

Just did that, went from 147MB free to 3.09GB. And NO, the memory was NOT available to iOS, I could not take pictures or download music.

Oddly, though, when I had deleted some downloaded music a couple of weeks ago it did seem to free up space IIRC. (That could be because that is direct space usage, not a cache problem?)

Frankly, due not just to this but all kinds of hiccups trying to have Spotify play in the car, I am going to try Apple Music. Sigh.

[Hairysoon]

I dumped Spotify and went for Google music.

[Hairysoon]

I dumped Spotify and went for Google music.

[user-removed]

This is crazy, Spotify is taking up way too much space on my iPhone. This week it got up to 5.86GB! Why on earth are paying customers unable to clear the cache?

Yesterday at 8AM I deleted and re-installed the app, newly installed the app took up around 70MB of space. I then listened to some radio for just under 2.5 hours and it went to 497MB – that's a massive increase.

Reinstalling is the only option? This is a realy pain to do, after the reinstall we have to set up all our preferences again. Seriously, we need to be able to clear Spotify's cache.

[Shad-el]

Go to the iTunes store, buy a movie which is larger than the free space on your phone. It will fail, due to space issues. But iOS will free up cached data. Probably needs to be done several times. 

[montezumacats]

That kinda makes sense...but if iOS is freeing up the cache, why would the storage fail? (Well, I suppose it depends on how much it frees? In my case I recovered OVER 3GB (!!!) of free space by deleting/reinstalling Spotify.)

[Mendezpath23]

Sorry if I'm a little late but I had the same problem as you but what you should do is hold the power button and home button til your phone goes dark and then the apple logo will appear and what you did was restarting your iPhone meaning your Spotify storage will decreased a little depending on how much offline music you have stored

[markreed49]

A few months after writing my initial comment, I got a new phone and the problem was resolved. 

I started noticing similar problems with other applications after uninstalling Spotify. It became pretty clear that I had some sort of physical memory corruption (or something) and Spotify has been working flawlessly since getting a new device.

I apologize for my incorrect assessment and hard words - I'd encourage anyone seeing similar issues to have Apple take a look at your phone!

[Hairysoon]

I dumped Spotify. On Google Play....way better.

[markreed49]

Yeah, I'm looking to Google Play and Apple Music right now. Google is probably going to win me over

[markreed49]

I recognize that this was posted a long time ago, but I don't think that iOS will clean up spotify's cache any more.

All of my other application's caches get cleaned, and the Spotfy behemoth just continues to grow. The settings app says that Spotify is taking up ~100mb of storage, but deleting the app, restarting my phone, and then reinstalling the app can clear upwards of 4gigs of storage for me in a single day of usage.

I can't tell if Spotify is intentionally storing files in non-cache-clearing locations in the file system, or if it's a bug, but either way it is making the app take over my phone and causes other applications to function poorly.

This has only started to happen relatively recently so something must have changed in a recent update

[montezumacats]

This is not a solution really. It *might* help slightly, but this is just a
BUG that Spotify HAS NOT FIXED for YEARS. You really have to delete and
re-install, it is SO dumb. I'm actually trying Apple Music now, not that
that is paradise either.