Why does apple music use way too much cellular data

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Level 1

5 points

Why does apple music use way too much cellular data

I have recently decided to try apple music instead of spotify, mostly because of the audio quality.

I understand that with better audio it uses more data but it's ridiculous. I have everything set to a minimum and it still uses almost 4-5 times more data than spotify? How is that possible

Heres some screenshots of how much data it used for the same exact song on both streaming services, spotify is on data saver mode and apple music is on high efficiency

And here are my settings

Am I doing something wrong? I've already downloaded my main playlist so I can listen to it offline but if I want to listen to new music it's just going to eat all of my data and it's just not worth it.

iPhone 14 Pro, iOS 16

Posted on Jul 20, 2023 4:23 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

SteVenNaNa

Level 1

8 points

Apr 5, 2024 9:36 AM in response to diogodiasptw

Turn off your Loseless audio settings, that’s what causing it, high efficiency do save data a lot that High quality

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Answer 2

diogodiasptw Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 20, 2023 5:37 PM in response to hcsitas

If apple spent as much data as they claim they'd have around the same data spent. Since you're so good at maths you should know that :)

Don't know why you're calling spotify falsify when it's the iphone that is showing how much data each app spent.

Whatever, if you're not going to even try and help don't know why you're even replying to threads.

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Answer 3

Jul 20, 2023 11:10 PM in response to diogodiasptw

I'm guessing that Apple is using the term High Efficiency to indicate 256 Kbps (32 KBps) AAC as opposed to Lossless.

About lossless audio in Apple Music - Apple Support

Lossless music ranges "from 16-bit/44.1 kHz (CD Quality) up to 24-bit/192 KHz." The uncompressed rates work out to roughly 176,400 to 1,152,000 bytes/second. Apple is using a lossless compression algorithm, but lossless compression generally comes at the cost of a variable and much lower compression ratio. Let's assume - for the sake of illustration - that ALAC can save 50% of the uncompressed file size.

Now we have:

High Efficiency (256 Kbps AAC) – 32 KB per second

Lossless – 86 to 563 KB per second

A 138-second Lossless 16-bit, 44.1 KHz stereo stream would require over 11 MB of data.

A 138-second Lossless 24-bit, 192 KHz stereo stream would require over 75 MB of data.

A 138-second High Efficiency 256 Kbps AAC stereo stream would require less than 5 MB of data.

256 Kbps is High Efficiency compared to the Lossless options, even though it might not have the same "Golden Ears" quality as far as the audiophile set are concerned.

Of course, unless you're using headphones, or plugging the iPhone into a real stereo system, the phone's small speakers will be much more of a limiting factor than sound quality than the differences in codecs (assuming the streams are all from a properly-mastered recording).

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Answer 4

diogodiasptw Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 20, 2023 8:19 AM in response to hcsitas

Does it?

It claims that it only spends around 1.5mb of data per 3 minutes song but on average it has been spending 4-6mb every 3 minutes. How is that normal? Spotify has been spending around 1-2 mb of data per 3 minutes of the same songs.

Other than false claims I can't really seem to see the issue.

The screenshot showed what both apps spent on a 2min18sec song.

Is there anything wrong with my settings?

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Answer 5

diogodiasptw Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 20, 2023 3:20 PM in response to hcsitas

Why have High efficiency if it spends the same as high quality? And why claim that it spends 4 times less?

If it did spend only 1.5mb per 3 minutes there's no way it's at 256 kbps

32*180 (3 minute song) = 5760 KB = 5.76 MB yet they claim it only spends 1.5 MB. How does that sound good with your math? :) Spending almost 4 times as much as they advertise sound good?

So thank you for your math that shows nothing new :)

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Answer 6

Jul 20, 2023 11:34 PM in response to Servant of Cats

Spotify's definition of music quality for mobile devices is that "Normal" is "equivalent to approximately 96 kbit/s" and that "High" is "equivalent to approximately 160 kbit/s."

There's "Very High" (for Premium subscribers only) which is "equivalent to approximately 320 kbit/s". It appears that only their "Very High" category is in the same class as Apple's "High Efficiency." 96 Kbps may require only about 38% as much data as 256 Kbps, but that doesn't mean it delivers the same audio quality.

https://support.spotify.com/us/article/audio-quality/

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