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Tutor

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3 Messages

Saturday, December 20th, 2014 2:38 PM

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Spotify uses data?

My question is very simple.  Hopefully the answer is simple too, but here's the background that leads to the question:

My wireless account contains 5 lines.  Two lines are used by two daughters who use Iphones.

One daughter. I'll call number 1, switches her data "off" on her phone.  The other daughter, number 2, doesn't and probably has no idea what that function does.

Number 1 claims that by keeping the data switched off minimizes data charges against our account and allows her to stream music freely, but seldom does.  She tries to take advantage of free wifi & hotspots whenever and where ever she goes. Number 2 on the otherhand, streams music from Spotify quite frequently regardless of where she is.  Although tries to get on wifi as much as possible she isn't always able to. Number 1 says that listening to Spotify doesn't get charged against our acct (data). So number 2 feels that's true and continues to stream.  As a result, in a typical month, number 1 uses about 1 GB and number 2 uses about 5 GB.

So here I ask, is data charged against my wirelessaccount when my daughters stream music from Spotify? (Spotify Pro or regular)

Accepted Solution

Official Solution

ACE - Sage

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116.6K Messages

9 years ago

On the iPhone settings under mobile data are settings to, "Use mobile data for..."
And then the list of apps on the phone with switches.
If you turn spotify to OFF, it can now only stream over wifi.
You can do this with all apps listed.

Scholar

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150 Messages

9 years ago

Daughter number 1 is doing good.  By only using wifi access points, she's limiting the amount of data she's using.  And depending on the quality of the connection, probably getting better bandwidth too because cellular networks are very good, but not as good as wifi can be.  Daughter number 2 is using a lot of data.  AT&T does not give away free music data, like T-Mobile does.  So daughter number 2 would get better speeds and keep your costs down by using wifi when possible.  By the way, if #1 is only using 1 GB a month, that's not a lot of data.  5 GB is a moderate amount, but 1 GB is about the length of a 90 minute tv show in standard definition.

Tutor

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3 Messages

9 years ago

Thank you for your feedback. What function does the data switch setting equipped in the Iphone have?

Scholar

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150 Messages

9 years ago

And one more thing. If you have both wifi and cell data turned on it will always pull wifi BEFORE using cell data.

Master

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4.1K Messages

9 years ago

This last comment is not always true. By design, the iphone will turn off the wifi radio when the device enters "deep sleep mode" (screen is off and the device requires you to enter the password when you wake it up) and it is not connected to external power. At that time, you can be streaming music using a service like Spotify or Pandora, and the iPhone will use cellular data because it has turned the wifi radio off to conserve battery.

ACE - Sage

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116.6K Messages

9 years ago

True.
Unless plugged in to charge/power, then it uses WiFi. It is possible to
completely turn cellular off, but then you won't get calls.

Contributor

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1 Message

7 years ago

On this same thread of optimizing and automating wifi, cell, and power settings... 

 

keep my wifi and Bluetooth generally off when traveling. this drops power use a lot but also causes a small hit on GPS resolution -I can live with that bc it's still fine for map apps. Also, turning down screen brightness to lowest workable setting is big battery bonus. 

 

Don't let yr kid use untrusted public wifi. Teach them about wifi trolls, etc.

Under settings>wifi> Set ask to join networks to OFF. Now go join some safe networks and it will only use those and won't show others without coming here. It will just fallback to cellular.

 

Under settings>cellular> Scroll down to the list of apps allowed to use cellular. Turn off any high use apps, like YouTube, or Netflix. Now, poor things have to wait ten minutes to get back to safe wifi before seeing the next awesome cat video. I use this trick on myself to hedge Reddit to wifi only use, but some apps, like Facebook, are nice to get cellular even tho they will eat data due to auto play of videos, so turn that off in FB settings even tho it's really cool effect. 

 

Another factor can be how many apps are running in the background. It's easy to get a lot running, and this can hit performance in a lot of ways. Especially since kids are often on older hand me down phones running newer generation apps, it a good idea to knock down the weeds in the backlot.

Teach yr kids how to control app notifications. They can pile up a lot of game apps that are heavy traffic, and since it's a pain in the to do it for them.. and they like being able to tell apps to shut up.. and it really starts them on weeding their own infosphere. custom rings are a big thing too.

 

i wish there were parental controls on what controls kids could see and use. Maybe a switch by each setting to enable it in the kids control panel.

 

1 Message

22 hours ago

"Hey there! While it's great that Number 1 is mindful of data usage by leveraging Wi-Fi, the idea that Spotify streaming doesn't consume data is a misconception. Regardless of whether data is turned off on the device, streaming music from Spotify does use data when not connected to Wi-Fi. So, it's likely that Number 2's frequent Spotify streaming is indeed contributing to the data usage on your account. Encouraging both daughters to be mindful of their data usage, perhaps by downloading music for offline listening when on Wi-Fi, could help manage data charges more effectively. Hope this helps clarify things!"

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