Google Music Streaming = Data Killer

[blairh]

Woke up this morning to a text warning from AT&T that I'm at 65% of my data limit for the month. (2 GB.)

I did a test some months back with respect to data usage on LTE when streaming from Google Music on my iPhone. It was pretty startling. A half hour of continuous streaming ate up a lot of data.

I've been using my iPhone as normal this past month. Only real difference is that I'll stream a song or two, and nothing more, as I walk back home from work at night. Always doing so with GoMusic.

Looking over my data usage on AT&T's site it appears these brief periods are serious data killers. I'm going to have to give up streaming from Google Music on my iPhone for the time being. I know you can pin your music with GoMusic but honestly it's a pretty annoying experience. It takes a long time to pin just one album and if you try to pin more than one album at a time it doesn't work.

I know Google is releasing an official Google Music app for iOS soon and perhaps that would help with offline use. For now I'm just going to do what I didn't want to do any longer which is add my music directly to my iPhone using iTunes.

Anybody have a similar experience?

 

[Southernboyj]

Woke up this morning to a text warning from AT&T that I'm at 65% of my data limit for the month. (2 GB.)

I did a test some months back with respect to data usage on LTE when streaming from Google Music on my iPhone. It was pretty startling. A half hour of continuous streaming ate up a lot of data.

I've been using my iPhone as normal this past month. Only real difference is that I'll stream a song or two, and nothing more, as I walk back home from work at night. Always doing so with GoMusic.

Looking over my data usage on AT&T's site it appears these brief periods are serious data killers. I'm going to have to give up streaming from Google Music on my iPhone for the time being. I know you can pin your music with GoMusic but honestly it's a pretty annoying experience. It takes a long time to pin just one album and if you try to pin more than one album at a time it doesn't work.

I know Google is releasing an official Google Music app for iOS soon and perhaps that would help with offline use. For now I'm just going to do what I didn't want to do any longer which is add my music directly to my iPhone using iTunes.

Anybody have a similar experience?

I noticed this too.. I used Spotify about the same but I don't remember it eating quite as much data. Maybe it's files are smaller?

 

[Michael Goff]

Google music automatically decides how high the quality of the file will be based on the speed of your connection. If you have a slow connection, it will lower the quality. If you have a speedy connection, it will be high quality. That's why it eats data for some people like it's candy.

 

[jeffe]

I think this thread was posted in the wrong forum as it is discussing iOS software on an iOS device.

Google music streaming is not for really target to those with a limited data plan really...for those users they should select to choose to play music just off your device..they can cache/download the songs when they are on wifi.

 

[MRU]

Google music automatically decides how high the quality of the file will be based on the speed of your connection. If you have a slow connection, it will lower the quality. If you have a speedy connection, it will be high quality. That's why it eats data for some people like it's candy.

but isn't there an option that enables high quality in settings that you have to tick to get high quality rather than it auto deciding ?

 

[Michael Goff]

but isn't there an option that enables high quality in settings that you have to tick to get high quality rather than it auto deciding ?

Everything I'm reading points to no.

 

[jeffe]

Everything I'm reading points to no.

There is a setting to stream always in high quality. Nothing about always streaming in low quality

 

[Southernboyj]

Everything I'm reading points to no.

On Android there is.

Google Play Music -> Settings -> Streaming -> Stream at highest quality only

 

[MRU]

On Android there is.

Google Play Music -> Settings -> Streaming -> Stream at highest quality only

Yeah thats where I saw it - but what is the difference between low - high & highest for example ?

They could definetly do with a stream low quality option too like Tunein Radio offers. That being said I only ever listen via wifi.

 

[Jessica Lares]

Well, if Google's streaming works anything like the API that other apps are using to allow All Access with ANY player, then the problem is that it's caching full MP3 files whenever it plays you something..

 

[Southernboyj]

Yeah thats where I saw it - but what is the difference between low - high & highest for example ?

I'm assuming it uses a lower bit rate. Highest is probably 320.