iOS offline tracks favoured?

[Bazrah]

Hi all,

Can't find a definitive answer to this one, so here goes...

New to spotify premium and have downloaded a few playlists and made them available offline. All good.

If I am out and about with only 3G coverage and play a playlist that has been downloaded to offline but do not specifically put the app into offline mode, will spotify use the offline tracks by default or just stream them again?

Thanks!

[robzim737]

Hi, I actually tested this last summer- so I can only speak to how it worked then, not right now.  When I tested, I found that it would play the offline version or the cached version (the iphone app keeps a cache of a little less than a GB of most recently played songs from the device) ONLY if the streaming quality setting is set to the same quality setting used for the cached or offline copy.  So for example- if you're streaming an album and have the quality set to normal (96 kbps), and you have one song from the album already saved for offline that's synced at the same "normal" setting, it plays the offline one and doesn't use your data for that track.  If you have the offline track synced at "extreme" (320kbps), it will stream the "normal" vesion, and use youre data.  It makes sense to me why Spotify made it this way (assuming it still works this way), because if I'm listening to an album or a playlist, I would want the quality of all the tracks to play at the same quality setting.

[LtMunst]

Just tested this, downloaded new album at 160k quality, streaming quality is set at 96.  Turned off Wifi so I could use my cellular data meter.  Played a previously unplayed album and watched to meter quickly count up.  Changed over to play the album I had downloaded.  The cellular data meter stopped.  The app was clearly using the 160k download and was not streaming the 96k version.