How much data does Spotify use

Listening and jamming to music is therapeutic. It can calm your inner soul and even soothe one to sleep. With the rise of the internet, there are several music-streaming apps with Spotify being one of them.

Spotify is a great and popular platform with over 50 million songs that you stream and listen to your favorite podcasts as long as you have internet access. Like other streaming services, it uses data which is a cause of concern for someone without an unlimited data plan.

Spotify uses between 10MB and 150MB per hour based on the sound quality of the music that you stream with a higher quality using more data.

Spotify offers you 5 audio quality settings that you can choose from. They include Low with a speed of 24kbps, Normal at 96kbps, High at a speed of 160kbps, Very High at 320kbps, and Automatic which depends on your network connection quality. These options can be accessed by clicking on Settings and navigating to Music Quality.

Audio Quality	Low	Normal	High	Very High
1 Song (Approx. 3 minutes)	0.5 MB	2.5MB	4MB	7.5MB
10 minutes	1.7 MB	7.6MB	13MB	24MB
1 hour	10.5MB	44.3MB	74MB	150MB
Album	7.4MB	30.4MB	50.1MB	100MB

An average song duration released in 2020 is slightly over three minutes while an average album has 12 tracks. As you’ve seen, you can choose different audio qualities that will consume different amounts of data. The least song quality will use about half a megabyte while the same song at its highest quality will take slightly more than 7 megabytes with this high quality being enjoyed on Spotify premium only.

These figures will vary depending on your usage and how you use Spotify. For example, when you play a song, Spotify caches the song’s snippets to allow you to replay the song. This will use less data compared to you playing a song for the first time. Also, if you’re listening to a song on repeat, you will consume less data.

How to reduce Spotify data usage

There are several ways to help you curb your Spotify data consumption. These include:

Method one: Turn on Data Saver mode 

Spotify has a data saver mode feature that is available to all users. This is the easiest and simplest way to minimize your data consumption. When switched on, it lowers the audio fidelity to Low (24kbps) which reduces data use by up to 85%. To enable Data Saver Mode, launch Spotify and click on Settings on the home screen on the top right-hand corner. Find and tap on Data Saver, on Android toggle it on while on iOS, you can turn it on by tapping on Data Saver and open its menu under which you can toggle the data saver to on. This also disables the Artist Canvas visuals hence saving more data.

Method two: Disable Canvas

This is another viable option to consider if you want to save on data but not compromise on the music quality. To turn off Canvas on Android, click on Settings and scroll down to ‘Canvas’ to turn off the toggle. On iOS, navigate to Settings and open the playback sub-menu. Next, scroll down to Canvas and toggle it off. 

Method three: Lower the quality of the audio

Spotify offers its content in 5 different quality tiers that one can adjust to. Lower tiers will consume less data while high tiers will consume more. By default, the audio quality is set to Automatic to give you the best quality available and avoid issues related to buffering when your connection fluctuates. Unless you have very good headphones or speakers, you may not even notice the difference between the different audio qualities. If you don’t want to turn the data saver mode on but still want to reduce your data consumption, you can manually set the streaming quality to be consistent in whichever connection. On Android, go to the homepage and click on the Settings menu found on the top-right corner of the screen with a cog icon. Scroll down and select Music Quality. Select and change the audio quality to your preferred quality.

On iOS, go to the home page and click on Settings. Scroll down and select ‘Music Quality’. On the Music Settings screen, you can change the quality from under Streaming. Remember, the lower the quality, the more you save and ‘Normal’ might be the most ideal option to choose. If you’re a premium user, you can also adjust your audio downloads’ quality by following the same steps and selecting ‘Downloads’ instead of ‘Streaming’. This can help save you on both data and storage space.

Method four: Download music

This feature is only available to Spotify Premium users and can download up to 10, 000 songs. It allows a user to download as many songs as you like when online on a Wi-Fi network and be able to play these songs offline. You can also download playlists, podcasts, and albums simply by tapping on the download button which is denoted by an arrow facing downwards next to the song or album you wish to download. To listen to this content offline, you need to set the Offline Mode by tapping on Settings and navigating to under Playback. For podcasts, they can be automatically pre-downloaded or on-demand but only the audio is downloaded since the video podcasts use data to live stream. It’s worth noting that these songs and podcasts take up your phone’s storage space.

Final Thoughts

Though Spotify uses a lot of data, you can still enjoy your music using little or no data by making use of one or more of the above saving methods.

FAQs

Can I listen to Spotify without data?

Yes, you can listen to Spotify without data only if you’re a premium member and have downloaded music to your phone.

Which is the best audio quality setting for saving data?

The best audio quality is ‘Normal’.