Streaming Quality 'Automatic' option ??

[Hush7]

In setttings under Streaming Quality there is a new option labeled 'Automatic (recommended)'. What exactly does this option do?

I've seen some people suggest that is lowers the quality to normal while using cellular data, and raises it while on wifi.

I've also seen others suggest that it raises the quality if you have a good connection (regardless if the connection is on a cellular or wifi network).

To conserve data in the past I always had mine set to 'normal' quality (96 kbps).

Could someone clarify what the 'automatic' setting is actually doing?

Thanks...

[MattSuda]

Quote from a Spotify employee:

"The Automatic Quality Option will choose the most suitable bitrate for you depending on the network environments. The first implementation is quite simple but we will evaluate different approaches and improve it in the future.

The "Automatic Quality" setting won't increase the data usage on carrier networks. If we add something that will increase the data usage we will leave it up to the users to decide if they want to opt-in to a better experience at the cost of increased data usage."

[Hush7]

Thank you for the reply Matt, but that quote still doesn't completely tell me what the option does.

The two statements seem to somewhat contradict each other. The first says that the bitrate is determined by the network environment. I know on Google Play and other services, this means it sets it to the highest possible bitrate based on connection quality, regardless of what type of network you're connected to (cell vs wifi).

The second statement implies that using this setting won't increase data usage. Does this mean that is sets the stream quality to normal while on cell networks and only bumps it up when on wifi?

Is there an app available for iOS that I could use to test the data throughput while using the automatic vs normal options?

[MattSuda]

Sorry I can't be more helpful. I saw that quote from an employee and thought it might at least help a little bit.

It's a new option and I haven't heard much about it yet.

[Hush7]

No problem Matt, thanks for your help! Maybe someone else will chime in once more info is revealed about the feature.

[BrilliantThings]

Funny... there aren't any updates about this on the support pages. Anyone found anything out yet?

[Gabrielvilen]

My guess is that it only amps up the quality on wifi, since the employee claims that they will not increase the data usage on carrier network (second paragraph). However I cannot find anything more to back this up so I'm not sure.. Confusing indeed 🙂

[BrilliantThings]

Received this email from Spotify support. It followed a previous email that said Automatic Streaming Quality defaults to the default for the currently used device.

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out to us.

Spotify uses 3 quality ratings for streaming, all in the Ogg Vorbis format.
• ~96 kbps
• Normal quality on mobile.

• ~160 kbps
• Desktop and web player standard quality.
• High quality on mobile.

• ~320 kbps (only available to Premium subscribers)
• Desktop high quality.
• Extreme quality on mobile.

Click here to learn how to turn on High Quality Streaming: http://bit.ly/1a7ceKn.

Hope this helps. Should you have more questions, feel free to send us an email and we'll be right here.

Cheers,

Kind of strange that it doesnt take wifi into account. I made the suggestion that bitrate should change when connection changes from cellular to wifi. We'll see.

[jonwestcott]

Anyone have further info on this yet?

We need info re the choices the app is actually making. Is it based simply on cellular versus wifi? On wifi do we get Normal or Extreme? Default to highest possible quality?

Anyone?

[LemBi]

Hi,

I am also interested in this, strange no one exactly knows what auto setting does.

[Npwilliamson]

I'd love an answer to this question too. It would be great if the "automatic" option adjusts bitrate for cellular vs wifi connection, but can't really afford to blaze through my monthly cellular data by streaming 320kbps. Surely a simple explanation of what this setting means isn't too much to ask. Until then I'm stuck manually switching between high and normal depending on my connection type.

[heiristo]

Same here. Could someone pls answer that clearly?

[robclaisse]

Another vote for an answer on this.

[tonypee]

This is reduced functionality I think. as I recall we used to be able to set this separately for streaming over mobile networks. As it stands this now leaves users in the dark on what quality is applied when. spotify should clarify the logic or bring back the more granular settings in my opinion.

[serversurfer]

---

@Gabrielvilen wrote:
My guess is that it only amps up the quality on wifi, since the employee claims that they will not increase the data usage on carrier network (second paragraph). However I cannot find anything more to back this up so I'm not sure.. Confusing indeed 🙂

---

That's how I read it as well.  It automatically chooses a higher quality stream if you have a "good" connection, but never does so on cellular, lest you unwittingly hammer your data plan.

Sounds like a pretty good setting, if that's actually how it works. lol

[user-removed]

I have been talking to two Spotify support people about this since yesterday and I still can't get a straight answer out of either of them. It's actually kind of amazing.

"The automatic quality will always adjust to the quality of your signal provider and its speed. It will not jump to another quality unless you select if from your settings."

"What we meant is that while being on the automatic quality it will remain that way, regardless the type of connection you have. What we do suggest is that while streaming using your cellular data is use it on low quality, that will prevent date usage to be high and still, you'll be getting a very good quality sound."

"When the quality settings of your app is on automatic, the app plays music on Normal or Standard quality that the app indicates the device to use. Since different devices have different capabilities, the Normal quality on one device would be high on another.

If you still have the first email we sent you, it basically means that when you're on Automatic quality, playing music on a computer uses 160 kbps and 96 kbps on mobile.

The quality of music doesn't change depending on the network you're using be it through WiFi or through cellular data. It will only change the quality if you manually set the device to play on High and Extreme quality. "

What does any of this mean? Automatic adjusts quality based on connection speed, except it doesn't? Which is it? How is this such a difficult question to answer?

[serversurfer]

---

@user-removed wrote:

If you still have the first email we sent you, it basically means that when you're on Automatic quality, playing music on a computer uses 160 kbps and 96 kbps on mobile.

The quality of music doesn't change depending on the network you're using be it through WiFi or through cellular data. It will only change the quality if you manually set the device to play on High and Extreme quality. "

---

These two lines seem to be saying that if you choose Automatic, you'll get 96k on mobile clients, and 160k on desktop clients, period.  Line speed and/or quality has no effect on the bitrate delivered; only the client type.  The second line isn't super clear, but it seems to be trying to clarify that Automatic never goes above 96k on mobile — even when on WiFi — so the only way to get higher bitrates on mobile is to explicitly choose High or Extreme.

That's how I read it, anyway. I couldn't make much sense of the rest of it, to be honest.

[user-removed]

That's also how it reads to me, but if that's the case then it works exactly the same way as Normal quality streaming. There is no "Automatic" option on the desktop, and I never asked about it, so I don't know what they were trying to tell me there.

After several more emails (each hilariously ending in an assurance that this will DEFINITELY answer my question), I believe Automatic will in fact play the highest possible bitrate regardless of whether the user is on WiFi or cellular. I'm still not 100% sure, but talking to support is driving me crazy so I'm done for now. I have to wonder if maybe there is a language barrier in play, because it has been almost comical how difficult to understand their responses are, and how poorly they seem to have understood my questions. I suggested allowing users to manually set different quality levels for mobile and WiFi streaming, but people have been asking about that for years so I'm not optimistic about it actually happening anytime soon.

[cthart]

What a useless setting!

My 4G connection speed is mugh higher than my WiFi connection speed. But my monthly quota for mobile data is just 2G, while on WiFi it's unlimited.

I want to be able to stream at extreme quality (not possible with automatic) when on WiFi, and drop to high quality when on 4G.

Please give us the ability to set the streaming quality indiviually based on the connection being used.

[gorredijk]

I just compared how much data spotify dowloads on automatic versus extreme over 3g with a network monitor. Extreme definitely down loads a lot more compared to the same track over automatic. Hope that helps a bit.