- Does Spotify Use Data To Play
- Does The Free Version Of Spotify Use Data Usage
- Does Spotify Premium Use Data
- Does Spotify Use Phone Data
- Does Spotify Use A Lot Of Data
- Does Spotify Use Your Data
The apps that use the most data typically are the apps that you use the most. For a lot of people, that's Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, Snapchat, Spotify, Twitter and YouTube. While the developer is fixing the problem, try using an older version. If you need the previous version of Spotify, check out the app's version history which includes all versions available to download. Download prior versions of Spotify for Windows. All previous versions of Spotify are virus-free and free to download at Uptodown. Setting a track as 'offline' downloads the track to your device and is then available if you have no signal, are in airplane mode, have set Spotify to 'Offline' etc. It will play directly from the cache and will not use any data connection or bandwidth. How much data does Spotify use is an important question to answer if you have limited data on your iPhone or iPad. If you often enjoy streaming music on the go with the Spotify app on your iPhone, it makes sense to ask yourself, does Spotify use data, and also, does Spotify Premium use data. Spotify is the world’s biggest music streaming platform by number of subscribers. Users of the service simply need to register to have access to one of the biggest-ever collections of music in history, plus podcasts, and other audio content. It operates on a freemium model. Free Spotify access comes with lower sound quality, and advertisements, and requires an internet connection.
Effective as of January 1, 2020
1 Introduction
2 About this Policy
3 Your rights and your preferences: Giving you choice and control
4 Personal data we collect from you
5 What we use your personal data for
6 Sharing your personal data
7 Data retention and deletion
8 Transfer to other countries
9 Links
10 Keeping your personal data safe
11 Children
12 Changes to this Policy
13 How to contact us
2 About this Policy
3 Your rights and your preferences: Giving you choice and control
4 Personal data we collect from you
5 What we use your personal data for
6 Sharing your personal data
7 Data retention and deletion
8 Transfer to other countries
9 Links
10 Keeping your personal data safe
11 Children
12 Changes to this Policy
13 How to contact us
1. Introduction
Thanks for choosing Spotify!
At Spotify, we want to give you the best possible experience to ensure that you enjoy our service. To do this we need to understand your streaming habits so we can deliver an exceptional and personalized service specifically for you. Your privacy and the security of your personal data is, and will always be, enormously important to us. So, we want to transparently explain how and why we gather, store, share and use your personal data - as well as outline the controls and choices you have around when and how you choose to share your personal data.
That is our objective, and this Privacy Policy (“Policy”) will explain exactly what we mean in further detail below.
2. About this Policy
This Policy sets out the essential details relating to your personal data relationship with Spotify USA Inc. The Policy applies to all Spotify services and any associated services (referred to as the ‘Spotify Service’). The terms governing your use of the Spotify Service are defined in our Terms and Conditions of Use (the “Terms and Conditions of Use”).
From time to time, we may develop new or offer additional services. If the introduction of these new or additional services results in any material change to the way we collect or process your personal data we will provide you with more information or additional terms or policies. Unless stated otherwise when we introduce these new or additional services, they will be subject to this Policy.
The aim of this Policy is to:
- Ensure that you understand what personal data we collect about you, the reasons why we collect and use it, and who we share it with;
- Explain the way we use the personal data that you share with us in order to give you a great experience when you are using the Spotify Service; and
- Explain your rights and choices in relation to the personal data we collect and process about you and how we will protect your privacy.
We hope this helps you to understand our privacy commitments to you. For further clarification of the terms used in this Policy please visit our Privacy Center on spotify.com. For information on how to contact us if you ever have any questions or concerns, please see Section 13 ‘How to contact us’ below. Alternatively, if you do not agree with the content of this Policy, then please remember it is your choice whether you want to use the Spotify Service.
3. Your rights and your preferences: Giving you choice and control
The General Data Protection Regulation or 'GDPR' gives certain rights to individuals in relation to their personal data. Accordingly, we are happy to offer transparency and access controls to help users take advantage of those rights. As available and except as limited under applicable law, the rights afforded to individuals are:
- Right of access - the right to be informed of, and request access to, the personal data we process about you;
- Right to rectification - the right to request that we amend or update your personal data where it is inaccurate or incomplete;
- Right to erasure - the right to request that we delete your personal data;
- Right to restrict - the right to request that we temporarily or permanently stop processing all or some of your personal data;
- Right to object -
- the right, at any time, to object to us processing your personal data on grounds relating to your particular situation;
- the right to object to your personal data being processed for direct marketing purposes;
- Right to data portability - the right to request a copy of your personal data in electronic format and the right to transmit that personal data for use in another party’s service; and
- Right not to be subject to automated decision-making - the right to not be subject to a decision based solely on automated decision making, including profiling, where the decision would have a legal effect on you or produce a similarly significant effect.
In order to enable you to learn more about these rights, exercise these rights with ease, and record your preferences in relation to how Spotify uses your personal data, we provide the following resources:
- Privacy Settings (accessed via your account page) - allows you to exercise choices about the processing of certain personal data, and an automated ‘Download your data’ function to download basic account and usage information.
- Privacy Center - provides a convenient central location where you can find more information about how Spotify uses your personal data, your rights in relation to your personal data, and how to exercise those rights.
- Notification Settings (accessed via your account page) - allows you to choose which marketing communications you receive from Spotify. You may toggle these settings to opt in or out of receiving different types of email and push notifications. Please note that email marketing messages from Spotify include an opt-out mechanism within the message itself (e.g. an unsubscribe link in the emails we send to you). Clicking on the link in an email will opt you out of further messages of that category (e.g. Artist Updates). You can use the Notification Settings page to exercise choices about all categories of email and push marketing communication.
- Cookies Policy - provides more information on how we use cookies, including for interest-based advertising. You will also find information about how you can manage your cookie preferences and opt-out of certain types of tracking; and
- Customer Support resources - We have several pages on our customer support site which provide further guidance about data protection questions. A key source of information is the Data Rights and Privacy Settings article which includes answers to “frequently asked questions” about personal data processing in the Spotify Service.
If you have any questions about your privacy, your rights, or how to exercise them, please contact our Data Protection Officer using the ‘Contact Us’ form on the Privacy Center. If you have concerns around our processing of your personal data, we hope you will continue to work with us to resolve them. However, you can also contact and have the right to lodge a complaint with the Swedish Data Protection Authority (Datainspektionen) or your local Data Protection Authority.
Additional privacy rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) can be found in our supplemental policy “Additional California Privacy Disclosures”, which contains supplemental disclosures relating to the processing of your personal data.
4. Personal data we collect from you
We have set out in the tables below the categories of personal data we collect and use about you and how we collect it:
The table below describes personal data collected when you sign up for the Spotify Service:
Categories of personal data | Description of category |
User Data | This is the personal data that is provided by you or collected by us to enable you to sign up for and use the Spotify Service. Depending on the type of Spotify Service plan you sign up for, this may include your username, email address, phone number, birth date, gender, street address, and country. Some of the personal data we will ask you to provide is required in order to create your account. You also have the option to provide us with additional personal data in order to make your account more personalized. The exact personal data we will collect depends on the type of Spotify Service plan you sign up for, how you create an account, and whether you use third party services (such as Facebook) to sign up and use the Spotify Service. If you use a third party service to create an account, we will receive personal data via that third party service but only when you have consented to that third party service sharing your personal data with us. Please note that the available plans and sign-up options may differ by country. |
How Pandora and Spotify Work
When a user visits Pandora and creates a radio station based on, for example, his or her favorite artist, Pandora searches for similar artists and songs using the complex algorithms of the Music Genome Project, a music database that Pandora has patented. The Music Genome Project compiles information on songs, first categorizing each one by genre. A musician then analyzes every song for up to 30 minutes at a time, finding unique characteristics with which to further categorize the music by (e.g., types of instruments used, gender of lead vocalist, rhythm, tonality, etc.). Most songs have hundreds of attributes that help Pandora determine the similarities and differences between one song and another.
Pandora users can further customize their personal radio stations by giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to songs that are recommended to them. They can also share their stations with friends; however, linking to specific songs directly is impossible due to licensing restrictions.
Spotify is less about new music discovery than it is about replacing traditional music players, like iTunes or Windows Media Player, with streamable music. Spotify depends on a large catalogue of roughly 20 million songs to accomplish this—a sticking point in some countries when major record labels have not wanted to make deals with the company. In theory, users should be able to create an account on Spotify, search for any song or artist that they like, and begin streaming that music with Spotify's online player.
Playlists
On Pandora, radio stations are really just playlists (and vice versa) and come with the same limitations that all Pandora stations come with. Users can build their own stations/playlists based on their favorite music, use friends' shared playlists, or take advantage of one of many public Pandora stations that are based on genre. However, manually adding individual songs or albums is not supported.
Playlists on Spotify work in the same way that playlists in traditional media players work. Music is manually added or removed by the user. The only difference between Spotify's playlists and traditional media players' playlists is that Spotify's can be easily shared (and even co-edited). This has made Spotify a popular choice among those searching for a free or cheap and legal way to share their favorite artists and songs. It has even led to the creation of full websites (e.g., Playlists.net) dedicated to sharing and rating spotify playlists.
Pandora allows users to create up to 100 unique stations/playlists, while Spotify puts no limit on the number of playlists a user can create.
Phone Apps
Pandora has mobile phone apps for Android and iOS, as well as some limited support among Windows Mobile devices and Blackberries. On the iPhone, the Pandora app can only be installed using a U.S., Australian, or New Zealand iTunes account.
Spotify has apps available on a wide variety of mobile devices around the globe. Android, iOS, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile and Windows Phone are all supported.
Free vs Paid Subscriptions
Relatively few restrictions are placed on non-paying Pandora and Spotify members. The most jarring difference between free and paid memberships on both services is the presence of ads; paying members experience no audio ads on Pandora or Spotify.
Pandora's premium membership is known as Pandora One and costs $4.99 a month. Spotify's subscription is known as Spotify Premium; at $9.99 a month, it is more expensive than Pandora One.
As of 2014, students can subscribe to Spotify Premium for $4.99 a month provided they have a .edu email address from an accredited college or university in the U.S. that they can prove they are enrolled in. This reduced pricing is available to students for three years.
Restrictions on Free Membership
![Does spotify use your data Does spotify use your data](/uploads/1/3/4/0/134050422/868609209.png)
Both Pandora and Spotify put restrictions on non-paying users. The restrictions have changed numerous times over the years as both companies have tried out different pricing models and been affected by changing licensing fees or laws.
At present, Pandora's restrictions on its free members are as follows:
- Audio advertisements that last for 15 to 30 seconds periodically interrupt music. The number of ads served up in an hour varies depending on the operating device (i.e., whether listening to Pandora via computer, mobile, or car).
- Restrictions on how many songs can be skipped in a day. Six skips are allowed, per hour and per station; only 30 skips are permitted across all stations in a 24-hour period. Clicking the 'next' play button, selecting 'I'm tired of this track,' or downvoting (giving a thumbs down to) a song while it plays all count as a skip.
- Reduced audio quality. Music for free members plays at 64 kilobits per second in an AAC+ format. Built-in apps for televisions and other non-mobile devices, like Roku, may receive a slightly higher quality of 128 kbps.
- Timeouts. To avoid paying royalties on songs that users might not be listening to, Pandora periodically times out if the player has not been used in a while.
Spotify places similar restrictions on its free members:
- 15- to 30-second audio ads.
- Reduced audio quality. However, at 160 kbps in the Ogg format Spotify's free version offers a higher quality sound than Pandora does.
Premium Membership Benefits
Pandora One's benefits include the following:
- No ads.
- Higher audio quality of 192 kbps.
- Downloadable desktop application. Users are no longer limited to using Pandora on their mobile devices or in the browser.
- Custom skins for the web application.
- Fewer timeouts, allowing users to listen for longer periods of time without having to interact with the player.
Spotify Premium benefits include the following:
- No ads.
- Ability to download music for offline listening.
- Higher audio quality of 320 kbps for some songs.
- Use of Spotify Connect, which allows users to hook up other hardware to Spotify's mobile app.
Library Size
In 2011, Tim Westergren, a founder of Pandora, stated that the service had over 900,000 songs in its library catalogue at the time. More recent statistics are difficult to find, but it is likely Pandora has well over a million songs in its database as of 2014. Pandora has a good track record of finding and adding obscure independent artists, which aids users in discovering new music.
Because Spotify depends on having songs available on demand, the company has been more aggressive about making deals with major labels as well as well known independent labels. In 2012, its catalogue was said to hold about 20 million songs; however, the size of the catalogue varies by region due to licensing restrictions.
Social Features
Pandora and Spotify provide users with several ways to share music, but Spotify has more widespread, general sharing capabilities than Pandora does.
On Pandora, users can share links to stations via email, Facebook, or Twitter. Users can also share links to individual tracks, but the web address points to general song information—lyrics, purchase info, and a link to create a station based on the song, not listen to it directly (see an example).
With Spotify, users can share individual songs, full albums, and playlists. This is done via special links that target the Spotify application itself. This flexibility has led many third-party websites to adopt Spotify links as a method to legally share music. And as of 2014, Spotify has teamed up with Last.fm, an online music statistics and recommendation service, to try to compete with Pandora.
Parental Controls
For parents who are concerned about the music their children might listen to, Pandora is the better option, as it offers parental control options that will play censored versions of songs and exclude others entirely. Because every song is analyzed by real people, Pandora's parental controls are very reliable and do not simply rely on 'Parental Advisory' labels.
Does Spotify Use Data To Play
In contrast to Pandora's rigorous parental control system, Spotify offers no such capabilities. This means that explicit, uncensored music is available to anyone who signs up to Spotify.
Other Features
While Spotify's flexibility may make it more universal on the web in some respects, Pandora is found a lot more frequently beyond computers and mobile devices. Not only do many audio-video receives, media players, and HDTVs carry default support for Pandora, but so too do many modern automobiles that have digital radio systems.
Does The Free Version Of Spotify Use Data Usage
Spotify can be found on or downloaded for many mobile devices and media players, but it is rarer on HDTVs and is not built in to any vehicle's digital radio systems by default. In some cases, Spotify Connect can be used to join Spotify with a device or set of speakers, which are controlled via the Spotify mobile app, but Connect requires a premium membership.
Does Spotify Premium Use Data
Availability and Popularity
Pandora is much more popular than Spotify in the U.S.
Pandora has more users than Spotify does, but Spotify's service is available to more users around the world. Whereas Pandora only serves users in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand, due to licensing issues, Spotify reaches dozens of countries and territories (click here for a full list). This has made Spotify popular outside of the U.S., but Americans remain loyal to Pandora according to statistics.
In 2014, Pandora reached 200 million users, with nearly 70 million active each month. By comparison, Spotify has about 40 million users as of 2014, 10 million of them premium subscribers.
Does Spotify Use Phone Data
Both Pandora and Spotify depend on banner advertisements, music-interrupting ads, and premium member subscriptions for funding. However, as of 2014, both companies operate at a net loss.