- Spotify Audio Quality
- Spotify Does High Quality Streaming Affect Download Quality Youtube
- Spotify Does High Quality Streaming Affect Download Quality Movies
How much data does Spotify use? It depends on the sound quality you choose. The higher it is, the more data the streaming service will burn through. In any case, Spotify uses way less data than video streaming services (more on this later) and probably less than most people think.
The Spotify Android app lets you choose between five sound quality settings: Low (24kbps), Normal (96kbps), High (160kbps), Very high (320kbps), and Automatic (dependent on your network connection). You can access these options by heading to Settings > Music Quality on your Android phone.
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Spotify Audio Quality
To simplify things as much as possible, I’ve prepared an overview of how much data each setting uses per minute and hour as well as how long you’d have to stream music for to burn through 1GB of data. Keep in mind these numbers are approximate. Spotify can cache songs you’ve previously listened to, meaning they may not eat up the same amount of data the second time you play them.
High quality Spotify on computer 1. For Mac User Here is what Mac users need to do to get high quality Spotify streaming. The steps are easy and can be carried out by anyone using Spotify. Click on the Spotify. If you have 'High Quality' in preferences checked, Spotify should download the tracks in 320 Kbps or similar. 🙂 99% of the tracks are available in the Spotify catalogue in high quality, so most will download in high quality. If you previously made playlists offline before you selected 'High Quality' you will have to resync to make sure.
- Spotify defaults to automatically adjusting music quality when streaming songs. That default music quality setting is recommended for most Spotify users, but some audiophiles may like to manually adjust the streaming music quality in Spotify to be either lower or higher as desired.
- Lots of people will tell you “Oh yes, the difference is huge”. There are many answers right here using words like “massive” and “crisper” and “depth”.
Low (24kbps):
- Per minute: 0.18MB
- Per hour: 10.8MB
- How long until you reach 1GB: 92.5 hours
In any case, Spotify uses way less data than video streaming services (more on this later) and probably less than most people think. The Spotify Android app lets you choose between five sound. Spotify Free lets you listen at normal (96 kilobits per second) or high quality (160 Kbps). Spotify Premium adds Extreme quality streaming at 320 Kbps, which can make for better, more detailed. The service offers 'CD-quality audio', also known as high-fidelity sound, which refers to music files that haven't been compressed, while most other streaming services, including Spotify, deliver.
Normal (96kbps):
- Per minute: 0.72MB
- Per hour: 43.2MB
- How long until you reach 1GB: 23.1 hours
High (160kbps):
- Per minute: 1.2MB
- Per hour: 72MB
- How long until you reach 1GB: 13.8 hours
Very high (320kbps):
- Per minute: 2.4MB
- Per hour: 144MB
- How long until you reach 1GB: 6.9 hours
Now that you know how much data Spotify uses, let’s see how the numbers compare to video streaming. Watching HD content on Netflix uses up to 3GB of data per hour or as much as 7GB when the resolution gets bumped up to Ultra HD. Medium quality (SD) is a lot less data hungry, burning through 0.7GB per hour. Still, that’s almost five times as much as streaming music with the best sound quality available (320kbps).
Apple Music vs Spotify vs Google Play Music
What about Spotify’s competitors? Google Play Music and Deezer both offer a maximum audio bitrate of 320kbps, which uses approximately 144MB of data per hour. So does Tidal, although it also has a Hi-Fi plan with a bitrate of 1.411kbps for improved sound quality. It’s a lot more data hungry, using around 635MB per hour. Apple Music, on the other hand, has a maximum bitrate of 256kbps, which translates to around 115MB of data per hour.
An important thing to keep in mind is that Spotify — as well as other streaming services mentioned in this post — lets you download songs to your phone, which means you don’t have to use any data at all when listening to music.
How many hours per week do you listen to music on Spotify or other streaming services? Let us know in the comments!
Spotify has a range of audio quality options to suit your device, plan, and preferences.
Music quality
| Spotify free | Spotify Premium | |
| Web player | AAC 128kbit/s | AAC 256kbit/s |
| Desktop, mobile, and tablet | Automatic: Dependent on your network connection Low: Equivalent to approximately 24kbit/s Normal: Equivalent to approximately 96kbit/s High: Equivalent to approximately 160kbit/s | Automatic: Dependent on your network connection Low: Equivalent to approximately 24kbit/s Normal: Equivalent to approximately 96kbit/s High: Equivalent to approximately 160kbit/s Very high: Equivalent to approximately 320kbit/s |
Change music quality
Spotify Does High Quality Streaming Affect Download Quality Youtube
Turn music quality up to hear the finer details or turn it down to save data.
Note: You can’t change audio settings when using Spotify Connect to play on another device.
You can have different settings for listening online (streaming quality) or offline (download quality).
Higher streaming quality uses more data, and higher download quality uses more space.
Spotify Does High Quality Streaming Affect Download Quality Movies
- Tap Home .
- Tap Settings .
- Under Music Quality, select your preferred settings.
- Click in the top-right corner and select Settings.
- Under Music Quality, select your preferred settings
You can’t adjust music quality on the web player. Download the app to get more features.
Podcast quality
Podcast quality is equivalent to approximately 96kbit/s on all devices except the web player where it’s 128kbit/s.
On mobile/tablet, if you change the music quality to low, the podcast quality will also lower to approximately 24kbit/s.