Apple Music Data Song Stream

[dannyyourd]

Recently I removed my unlimited data plan from my AT&T plan because I was only averaging about 6gb/month so I got a much cheaper plan allowing me 20gb/month thinking that I would not ever come close to that. In the last 10 days, since switching plans, I have somehow managed to rack up 15gb of data on my phone. I've never reaching this peak of data before in my life so I started to get a little confused.

I decided to test out a few things so I used a Data Timer widget on my iPhone 6 to test out a few things. Spotify and Apple Music both are running about 8-10mb PER SONG when I'm streaming over my cellular network. On top of that even things like Maps/GPS is pulling in a ton of data. Researching it should really only be about 50mb or less per streaming hour and GPS should be astronomically smaller than that. The image attached to this is timing out 3 minutes of streaming on Apple Music (less than one song).

All of the normal recommendations are turned off such as roaming is turned off, I do not use any push notifications or background refresh, Wi-Fi assist is off, etc.

AT&T was absolutely no help and rather rude. Apple had me restore my phone, which hasn't fixed any of the problems I'm currently facing.

Any suggestions? Is this abnormal? HELP?!?!

 

[tjwilliams25]

Do you have high quality streaming turned on? Those numbers seem to suggest that you do. Apple Music is encoded at 256 kbps for high quality, which is the same quality as a download from the iTunes store. You can turn off high quality streaming in the Settings>Music menu. That should bring it down to a smaller data rate. In turn, if you listen to Apple Music Radio, it is constantly in that quality so it will use less data per hour.

 

[dannyyourd]

Do you have high quality streaming turned on? Those numbers seem to suggest that you do. Apple Music is encoded at 256 kbps for high quality, which is the same quality as a download from the iTunes store. You can turn off high quality streaming in the Settings>Music menu. That should bring it down to a smaller data rate. In turn, if you listen to Apple Music Radio, it is constantly in that quality so it will use less data per hour.

I do not have high quality streaming turned on. And Spotify is the lowest quality setting as well and I'm still getting those numbers. This has be completely boggled and frustrated

 

[tjwilliams25]

I agree. Those numbers are definitely off for what you are doing then. I'm not 100% sure what it could be, but it seems like it could have something to do with AT&T switching you to the lower plan. I used to have their 15GB plan and my wife and I would never even come close to hitting that, even with high quality Apple Music streaming. It may be a long shot, but seeing as all of your data throughput is off with all apps, you might want to try going to an AT&T store and getting a replacement SIM card.

 

[mildocjr]

1) Spotify and Apple Music both are running about 8-10mb PER SONG when I'm streaming over my cellular network.
Normal for high quality audio, you can change this in Settings > Music > High Quality on Cellular


2) On top of that even things like Maps/GPS is pulling in a ton of data. Researching it should really only be about 50mb or less per streaming hour and GPS should be astronomically smaller than that.
GPS data doesn't use a lot of data unless you have a lot of applications requesting your location Always. Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services and go though that list, toggling everything to Never unless you need it then Choose While Using if it is an option. If you don't have any reason to use it in the App, turn it off. If you go into the App later and do something that requires GPS it will tell you to change the settings to something more permissible.

3) All of the normal recommendations are turned off such as roaming is turned off, I do not use any push notifications or background refresh, Wi-Fi assist is off, etc.
Roaming is just there in case your only choice is hitting a tower that AT&T doesn't own for a cellular signal, AT&T likes to charge like crazy for this.
Wi-Fi assist can be off but it's only ever used when your wireless signal is so weak that your phone determines you'd have a better experience on a cellular network (pretty much it fails over to cellular once your phone takes about 30 seconds to load a page off 1 bar of Wi-Fi)
Push notifications use very little data as text is super small in data, you can expect them to be about 1-2 Kb in size.
Background refresh can still be used for apps that don't connect to the Internet.

4) AT&T was absolutely no help and rather rude.
My experience with them as well, why I switched to an unlimited Sprint plan (kind of hate the network but the support is much easier to deal with)

I hope this helps but with a smartphone you never want to sell yourself short on data, carriers love that because it doesn't cost them anymore, but it costs you a fortune. I left AT&T because I saw past them saying the network couldn't handle the data, I had unlimited with them even after I was grandfathered in and never had an issue with data speeds. I just noticed that they did that because they were the only one's that had the iPhone and since everyone wanted one they cut off unlimited data just so they could fill their pockets with unsuspecting customers money. Now that the phone has gone everywhere else, they've restored the unlimited data plan.