You love listening to music, and all your friends have recommended Spotify to you, a popular music streaming service that allows you to listen to millions of songs on your smartphone, computer, and other devices. The application, among other things, offering services in a completely legal way, also offers downloading songs to your device.
You would probably have already downloaded it to your smartphone if it were not for some doubts about its operation, the cost of the service, and the consumption of Internet traffic. So, do you want to know more?
How Many Gigabytes Does Spotify Consume?
To estimate the actual consumption of music streaming on Spotify, you can first use the default features available on your device.
On Android Smartphones (but also on tablets)
Taking into account the fact that the instructions for your mobile phone model may differ slightly:
- Open Settings (the gear icon on the home screen or in the app drawer).
- Select SIM cards and mobile networks.
- Go to the settings of your operator’s tariff plan.
- Tap on Data Usage Statistics.
Next, tap on the Spotify icon to access the chart associated with the app and check the consumption over different periods of time. Tap on the Today item (data connection) and select your preferred wording to check yesterday’s consumption, last month, or this month.
On iPhone/iPad
However, on iPhone and iPad, the amount of data is a little more vague, as it is based only on what is defined as the “current period”. In this case, to check, tap on the Settings icon located on the home screen or in the iOS app library, then tap on the Cellular item and check what is reported under the heading Cellular Data. Then find the Spotify app among the apps in the list and look at the amount of data used indicated under it.
In addition to what has been explained using the native tools of smartphones and tablets, it is possible to track the data traffic used in more detail also using some third-party applications that can be downloaded through the stores available on the devices.
How to Change the Streaming Quality
If you realize that the amount of data used by Spotify is too much compared to your data plan, you can use its app to regulate its consumption. If you haven’t done so yet, download it: go to the digital store of your smartphone or tablet – Play Store or alternative stores for Android and App Store for iPhone/iPad – then search for the Spotify app using the corresponding search engine (located at the top on Android, accessible by clicking on the Search tab on iOS); then simply type in the word “Spotify” to find the desired app (marked with a green circle). Then click on the corresponding button to download and install the app on your device.
Once downloaded, launch it by clicking on its icon or the Open button that appears in the digital store at the end of the installation. In case of first access, you will need to register for the service. You can also access the app by logging in and entering your login details.
Now you only need to click on Sound quality: you will be able to adjust the quality of music streaming, which also varies according to consumption. How much data does Spotify use? You can find this explanation in the list below, which illustrates the options available to you, located under the heading Cellular Streaming.
- Automatic – Automatically adjusts the streaming quality to provide a good balance between quality and consumption. This is the recommended setting and is enabled by default.
- Low – This is the setting that uses the least amount of data overall, but is also lower in quality, consuming around 24 kilobits per second.
- Normal – The Normal setting is equivalent to around 96 kilobits per second.
- High – The High setting is equivalent to around 160 kilobits per second.
- Very High – The highest setting is equivalent to around 320 kilobits per second (reserved for Premium users only).
If you’re wondering how much Spotify consumes per hour, the answer is about 144MB in very high quality, 72MB in high quality, 43MB in normal quality, and 10.8MB in low quality.
If you want, also enable the Automatic quality adjustment option (usually enabled by default, as recommended), which adjusts the audio quality depending on the bandwidth of your Internet connection.
As for the quality of music downloads (reserved for Premium users), the consumption of the internal memory of devices depends on the number of songs or playlists you want to download and their quality. However, you have options to reduce space: Automatic, Low, Medium, High, and Very High. Also, if enabled, the Download via mobile device switch is disabled to download only via Wi-Fi connection and prevent data loss.
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