Very high data usage

[daveb1]

Well, I have read in this topic that Spotify uses about 2,4MB per minute.That's about 144mb per hour, which is fine. 

Today I drove about 30 minutes to work and 45 minutes back and listned to Spotify on max. quallity. My data usage? 790MB! How is this possible for only 75 minutes of streaming?

[JCdotnl]

Hey @daveb1,

I've found an older post from one of our fellow community members! The answer by one of the Rock Stars is very accurate, and I hope this will help you.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-iOS-iPhone-iPad/Data-Usage/td-p/502830

Quote: @Peter__

Just doing some brief maths for you, this is assuming you have 1GB of data purely for Spotify just to make the calculations easier and ignores data caching which might occur if you listen to tracks more than once:
 
At 96kbps you can stream ~ 24 hours of content.
At 160kbps you can stream ~ 14.5 hours of content. 
At 320kbps you can stream ~ 7.25 hours of content. 
 
As Joe said above, synching tracks into offline mode whilst on WiFi is a good plan if you listen more than that!
 
Peter

- Jordy

[daveb1]

Thanks for your reply. The post of Peter tells me that you can stream about 7.25 hours with 1GB of data usage. Now.. I used about 800MB, which tells me I should have streamed about 5,8 hours. That's where the problem is, I only streamed for at max 1,5 hour. Ofcoruse the solution is simple, save it offline. But since I have only a 16GB iPhone I don't have very much space left.

[JCdotnl]

You are right! It is allot of usage. 
The post from peter is just an indication. When you stream a song, Spotify will save them in the cache, so the next time you stream the song, it will use less data. 

I suggest you track your data usage on your iPhone. 

Option 1)
Go to settings -> Mobile data -> Here is an overview of your data usage per app. -> Scroll down and Reset Statistics. -> Try to stream Spotify for 30 min. or more. -> Now you have an overview of the data Spotify has used on your streaming settings.

Option 2)
Use a 3th party app

The problem is your high data usage can be from other apps who uses data. Let me know what the results are, if Spotify uses allot more data the some community members are saying, I'll forward your problem with the staff.

- Jordy

[daveb1]

I already did that yesterday. Here you go:

It used about 755MB while using it about 1,5 hours.

[JCdotnl]

So some other Rockstars are saying to try re-instal Spotify. Some other people are encountering the same problems. 
We think the problem is Spotify downloading the album art over and over, since it's not saved properly. This can be the reason why your data usage is so high! 

The post about the problem, look there, post about your problem.
https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/iOS-Android-Offline-album-art-not-showing/idi-p/1203...

- Jordy

[daveb1]

Thanks, I will post my issue over there. But before I do that, can it something have to do with forwarding songs? So instead of listning 30 minutes to the songs Spotify picks,  skipping some songs? I'm not sure but I think it has the same way of downloading like on YouTube: you look at some video and YT buffers forward. Isn't Spotify doing the exact same thing?

[haaszilla]

Hey there,

I just switched from Apple Music to Spotify Premium, and have encountered an odd issue that I'm hoping to get help with.

When playing a song that I've set to be Available Offline, but don't have the app set to offline mode in the settings, it streams the song, using a ton of data (about 1 mb every 5 seconds).

Is this by design, or is this a bug with the latest version? It seems weird to me that it would stream the song when it has it downloaded to the device, but that's indeed what is happening for me. The only way to stop this from happening is to either turn cellular data off for the app in the iPhone settings, or to put the app to offline mode in the Spotify settings.

Is anyone else experiencing this? I don't want to have to switch the app to offline mode as there's a lot of functionally you lose when in this mode. I would prefer to keep the app online, but when playing songs to only access the downloads not to stream them, so that I don't use all my data in session lol.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

David

[Craigski]

I've just noticed that this week Spotify is consuming way more data over cellular than it used to when Streaming Quality is set to Automatic. 

Last year when I first signed up for Spotify I was confused by how Automatic Quality would work when streaming on cellular vs Wifi.  A google search showed many conflicting opinions on how it worked.

So I ended up playing it for an hour and watching how much data it consumed.  Last year it used around 50-60MB for an hours streaming over 4G.

This week I noticed my data usage jumped up by a large amount.  And the culprit seemed to be Spotify.  I reran the test and found it was now consuming around 190-200MB an hour when streaming over 4G.

According to my telecoms usage history, it only jumped up in the last week, though my usage of Spotify hadn't changed.

So what gives?  Has there been a change recently?  Is this how Automatic Quality is supposed to work?

[Garbera]

It seems like an issue with the newest update. Lot of reports over here on extremely high data usage since 5.3.

[JCdotnl]

@daveb1 Yes it's true! 
Spotify buffers the songs.

[jean3601]

Hey @haaszilla, Welcome to the community! 🙂

We have created an ongoing issues post about your issue here 🙂

If you could comment with the information requested it would be greatly appreciated 🙂

Have An Awesome Day! 🙂

[haaszilla]

Hey @jean3601, Thanks for the reply. I don't seem to be having any album art issues though. It all appears correctly for me. My issue is Spotify streaming songs I've already downloaded to the device! Like I mentioned in the post, the data I'm consuming is about 1 mb every 5 seconds, which would not be the album art loading, unless each image was 1 mb each, which would be massive for an image of that size!

[kingbeers]

I have the same problem since the last update. I already exceeded my data plan this month due to this problem.

I never had this problem before. I could stay Online and play my already downloaded songs offline.

When I go in Offline mode I can luckily still play my downloaded songs and it doesn't consume data, but this needs to be fixed asap.

Not 'just a new font' since the last update I guess...

[manelolesa]

I have the same problem 😞

[haaszilla]

So this is a bug then. This is a HUGE issue for people without unlimited data plans. Luckily I caught what Spotify was doing before I went over my limit, but it looks like some people weren't as fortunate. I feel like Spotify should be financially liable for any overages resulting from this bug in their software. Just my 2 cents. It would be great to get an official response from Spotify. I've sent them a support email, but haven't heard anything back yet.

[Swanny]

Hi @Craigski, I've been affected by the same issue, the Spotify devs are aware of the issue. It seems the issue is with album art not downloading properly so it's getting stuck downloading it over and over again.

[manelolesa]

Since the last update when I play music downloaded the application consumes large amounts of data seems to make streaming music although this downloaded.
Thank's
Manel

[Garbera]

Hi Manel

It's a known issue since one of the last updates. Spotify developers are looking into this issue right now.

If you don't want it to use data, put it in offline mode till it's fixed. If you want to be sure Spotify can't use any data when you're on celluar, go to settings --> mobile data and turn Spotify off.

Hope I helped you.

[haaszilla]

Ok so I got an answer back from support on the issue of Spotify, while in online mode, using a ton of data to play offline songs. He said:

---

"The Spotify application would still stream the tracks you saved and downloaded when your device if online and your Spotify is Online. The Available Offline will only work when your application is Offline."

---

So if the support guy is right, this behaviour is not a bug, but by design. I guess they decided to change things in the last update. I just can't seem to figure out why they would do something like this. To me it's confusing and to be honest a little deceiving.

But otherwise the app is great, I'll just have to remember to always turn offline mode on when I'm away from wifi. Annoying, but not a dealbreaker.