Hi all,

Does anyone know how much mobile data Spotify and streaming radio use?

Ideally, I’d like to know roughly how much Spotify and streaming radio usage I can expect from, for example, 1GB of mobile data.

Many thanks.

Depends on the bitrate.

For example a 128kb/s stream would be about 1MB per minute. 256kb would be 2MB per minute, 64kb/s would be 0.5MB per minute. Therefore as a very rough guide divide the bitrate by 128 and that gives you an approximate figure for MB per minute.

So for 1GB you'd get about 1000mins of 128kb streaming. Those are rough figures but close enough to give you an idea of how much you are using.

Depends on the quality setting but I use Spotify around an hour a day and at 320Kbps it uses more than 4GB over the month.

This is precisely the reason I can't see this new tidal streaming system hitting off on phones it will use too much data.

I signed up the day before yesterday. Put settings to max (HiFi), streamed away and after 45 minutes had used a Gig. Thank goodness I'm on AYCE data!

Having used Spotify for while it find it a fantasic app. For those with decent data plans necessary network performance it's a great service.

For Spotify there are 3 quality settings.
Standard - 96Kbps or about 43MB per hour
High - 160Kbps or about 72MB per hour.
Extreme - 320Kbps or about 144MB per hour.

So to use 1GB would take 23, 13 or 7 hours respectively.

On Spotify (Premium), you can set your playlists to be 'Offline' so you don't need to stream, you just play.

I'd hope for £19.99, Tidal can at least do the same, but when Spotify offers 320Kbps and offline playlists for £9.99 per month, I'm not sure Tidal will be the runaway success the money grabbing singers that helped it launch it last week are hoping for.

LOL £20 per month when EVERYONE else is doing it for a tenner?
Yesah, real winner there me things. bwahahahaha

"Spotify offers 320Kbps and offline playlists for £9.99 per month"

Just a heads up students (including OU) can get 50% discount on Spotify Premium so its only £4.98 pm. Just use Unidays because here's no annual membership fee like NUS extra card.

http://www.techex.co.uk/streaming-calculator is quite useful for working out how much data a stream will use.

Set the bitrate and 'recording' (listening) time and it will give you the total.

EG. 60 minutes at 128k = 56.25MB

In some countries, they don't include the data used through apps like Spotify (if you subscribe through the telco carrier). Same with mobile tv.

Is really the only way forward...

Wouldn't hurt for the UK to try something similar, or is that wishful thinking guys and girls?

EE did this with their film service, downloading or streaming movies didn't use your data allowance. They might have stopped that now though.

Still works. Along with root metrics. They are both zero-rated.

Streaming audio is by far the main consumer of mobile data on my phone. My work doesn't allow BYOD on the wifi, so if I'm streaming music there (or on the drive to/from work) it's via mobile data.

I use around 10GB per month, of which 7-8GB is taken by Google Play Music. I wonder how many other heavier data users are in a similar boat (perhaps spotify instead or iplayer radio) - my 10GB usage puts me in the most expensive tiers on the other networks, and into the 'all you can eat' band on Three. I doubt unlimited streaming data would be something the networks would want to encourage - although I might be wrong! (hell, I'd certainly move to "3GB plus unlimited spotify/google play music" if it was made available and it worked out cheaper than AYCE)

Why not just get Spotify Premium and have your music offline?

No data usage at all then.

With zero rating stuff like spotify it's been seen by some as the potential as a slippery slope into getting rid of net neutrality. I can see them going from zero rating them to asking them for money to guarentee a certain level of service across their network. They would pay up in my mind because when people see other service working well they'll blame the service for crappy speeds rather than the network.

I think zero rating is good for stuff like root metrics and apps that take up extreme (video streaming) but it's got to be done carefully.

I know that downloading music via wifi works well for some, and I did initially try to do that: I've a 64GB MicroSD card in my phone which I used to fill with a selection of music (transcoded down to 192kbit MP3 from my FLAC collection at home). Increasingly though I would fill the phone with music when in one 'mood' then find myself lacking other songs when I wanted to hear them. Nothing worse than filling it with Metallica and then fancying some Elmore James.

So now, I use Google play music (I've uploaded my collection to them - free for up to 50,000 songs) and stream whatever song I want, or have it build a playlist based on a particular song. When I pick a new song it doesn't take at all long to begin playing and it barely ever stutters - certainly never at my workplace (speedtests come in at around 10mbit) and neither on the motorway network. It didn't buffer once while I drove to Surrey and back during the easter weekend just gone.

I find this approach far easier than curating the phone's collection of music, and with Three's AYCE data I don't need to really care about my usage: currently around 10GB a month all told. Vodafone, o2 and EE offer SIM only contracts offering ~10GB of data, so since I'm within the bounds set by competing networks I don't feel as though I'm really going overboard with my usage: if AYCE got withdrawn I could easily cover my usage needs elsewhere (coverage notwithstanding: I really hope I don't actually have to try and use 10GB of data on Voda/o2!)

I'll call myself out on this one. While o2 and Vodafone both do SIM only contracts with >=10GB of data, it seems that EE don't offer more than 5GB on SIM only.

Ah well, my point still sort-of stands

Vodafone and O2 are developing and depending on where you are you may get usable 4g. If so Vodafone especially may be worth a look. If you're more than 10miles outside a town or City then EE

We have come a long way though since the days of O2 removing unlimited data saying the average user used less than a gig a month though.

It's the TIDAL HiFi tier (1411kbps - i.e. 16-bit/44.1kHz) that costs £20 p/m. The regular tier (320bps) costs £10 p/m.

With most people listening through crappy earbuds!