Streaming music on Apple Music can get expensive if you’re using cellular data. Provided that Apple Music even allows you to stream music in Lossless format; you can easily exhaust your limited data plan before you know it.
However, there are ways to minimize the amount of data Apple Music uses while you stream or download your music for later. We’ll show you how.
How much data does Apple Music use?
Before we explore how to reduce Apple Music data usage, let’s start by looking at how much data the platform uses when you stream music. To understand this, you have to consider the sound quality of Apple Music. To begin with, Apple Music supports different audio qualities.
The lowest quality available on Apple Music is High efficiency, consuming just 1.5MB of data for a three-minute song. The second option is High qualitythe lowest audio quality available if you’re streaming over Wi-Fi. High quality is capped at 254kbps, which is 6MB of data for a three-minute song. The next step is lossless audio quality, which allows you to stream files in the proprietary Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) format.
Streams lossless audio up to 24-bit at 48kHz and consumes 36MB for a three-minute song. The best quality on Apple Music is Lossless High Resolution which streams files up to 24-bit at 192kHz. It consumes 145MB for a three-minute song, but you’ll need more than to enable the option if you want to stream hi-res audio to your iPhone or iPad.
How to reduce the amount of data used by Apple Music
There is no single solution to reduce your Apple Music data consumption. However, by implementing the various solutions we have listed below, you will be able to save a substantial amount of data while using Apple Music.
1. Download music for offline listening
As one of the best apps to download music, the first step you should take is to download your music offline. As one of the benefits of subscribing to Apple Music, Offline Downloads lets you save your songs, albums, and playlists to your device, so you can listen to them when you’re low on data or sluggish. find in an area with low connectivity.
While streaming and downloading generally use the same amount of data (as long as they’re identical files with the same quality), the latter saves your files on your device, so you can access them again and again without need an internet connection. So you save data.
2. Reduce the sound quality of your Apple Music
To save more of your data, you need to reduce the quality of your downloaded files. You can do this by going to Settings > Music > Audio Quality > Downloads and selecting High quality.
Downloading music is the ultimate solution to save data, but you might also want to stream music sometimes. In this case, lower your streaming quality to save cellular data. To do this, open the Settings app > Music > Audio Quality > Mobile Data Streaming and select High efficiency.
You can also limit the quality of streaming over Wi-Fi by accessing Settings > Music > Audio Quality > Wi-Fi Streaming and selecting High quality.
3. Disable Download Over Cellular Data
Another way to save your data is to turn off the ability to download songs using cellular data. To disable this feature, open the Settings app, scroll down and select Music. On the next page, scroll down to the Downloads section and disable Download via mobile data.
With this setting disabled, Apple Music will not download music even if you want to while using cellular data.
4. Disable Animated Art While Using Cellular Data
Some playlists, albums, artist pages, etc. may have animated cover art on Apple Music. As you probably guessed, animated covers consume more data. To reduce data usage, you should turn off animated art when streaming music using cellular data.
Open the Settings app and go to Musicthen go to animated art and select it. On the next page, select Wi-Fi only. By default, Apple Music plays animated art over Wi-Fi and cellular data.
5. Prevent Apple Music from accessing cellular data
This is the last option to take if you don’t want Apple Music to stream or download anything when you’re not connected to Wi-Fi. It’s a simple kill switch that blocks the Apple Music’s access to your data. Here’s how:
- Open the Settings app.
- Scroll down to your apps and select Music.
- On the next page, turn off the switch next to Mobile data at the top of the page.
Save data when using Apple Music
Apple Music can easily exhaust your limited cellular plan, but by changing the sound quality on Apple Music and making a few tweaks, you can continue using the service with peace of mind. Start by downloading your music for offline streaming, then lower the streaming quality and turn off animated art when streaming on cellular data.
Take it a step further by disabling music downloads over cellular data, and if you don’t want Apple Music to have a share of your cellular data, block access to it altogether.
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