Pandora and data downloads.

[frontallobotomy]

Does anyone know how much data is used listening to Pandora on smart phones? I prefer to listen to it in the car but don't want to use up my data plan.

[OKCisOK4me]

You won't use your data plan if you have home wifi. I only have 3 GBs of data available and I only used 41% of it last month. Of course, I wasn't listening to Pandora everyday so get the 3g watch dog app and just pay attention to your data.

[SoonerDave]

You won't use your data plan if you have home wifi. I only have 3 GBs of data available and I only used 41% of it last month. Of course, I wasn't listening to Pandora everyday so get the 3g watch dog app and just pay attention to your data.

One of the reasons I'm glad my little smartphone has a boring, unsexy, old-school FM tuner so I can listen to my stations and use exactly zero bytes of my data plan

[JamesFiend]

I'm a big fan of Spotify myself. Not only can I pick the artists I want to hear (vs artists that "sound" like what I want to hear) you can also sync playlists to your device so you can listen without wifi/data.

[OKCisOK4me]

One of the reasons I'm glad my little smartphone has a boring, unsexy, old-school FM tuner so I can listen to my stations and use exactly zero bytes of my data plan

I'm confused...did your car stereo get jacked? The OP was asking about listening to Pandora in his car because local stations suck...

[frontallobotomy]

I'm confused...did your car stereo get jacked? The OP was asking about listening to Pandora in his car because local stations suck...

That and I travel now and then and like my Pandora stations.

[frontallobotomy]

You won't use your data plan if you have home wifi. I only have 3 GBs of data available and I only used 41% of it last month. Of course, I wasn't listening to Pandora everyday so get the 3g watch dog app and just pay attention to your data.

That wouldn't work for me because I have others on my plan using data and that would just keep track of mine.

[OKCisOK4me]

Well, if your 'others' are kids and you know that they use a majority of your data, then I wouldn't risk it. Unless, if for example, you're with a company like ATT, and you don't mind then $10 upcharge for using another GB of data, then go for it ;-)

[zookeeper]

I'm a Pandora paid subscriber which they call Pandora One. It's the best $36 a year I spend as it completely rids the experience of ads, gives you better sound quality on certain devices and gives you more skips. Concerning the data usage issue, if usage is a concern make sure you have your device set to "64kpbs AAC stream", called "Normal Quality" on some devices. Don't go with the HQ setting, this can be changed in preferences. A rough estimate using the Normal Quality setting is 30mb per hour of streaming. I love my Pandora.

[OKCisOK4me]

Yeah, way better than whatever you have to pay for XM.

[Anonymous.]

I am grandfathered into the "unlimited" plan from ATT, but I am throttled every month, usually with about 1.5-2 weeks before the billing is reset. I stream video and pandora over network daily, though.


If you have an LTE phone with ATT, the limit is 5GB and 3GB and other devices (before they throttle unlimited plans).

[Diesel54]

If you're using an iphone, you can go to settings > general > usage > cellular usage > and reset the statistics. This tells you how much data you're receiving on your individual phone. Just reset it and check a week later to see how much you're using, or do it once a day. That's how I gauge my usage. If you're on an android, they probably have a similar setting but I'm not sure.

[frontallobotomy]

If you're using an iphone, you can go to settings > general > usage > cellular usage > and reset the statistics. This tells you how much data you're receiving on your individual phone. Just reset it and check a week later to see how much you're using, or do it once a day. That's how I gauge my usage. If you're on an android, they probably have a similar setting but I'm not sure.

That's what I did and listened to Pandora for an hour using just the Verizon network and now I can see why it added up so fast.

[OKCTalker]

Not wanting to start a flame war, but one of my pet peeves is people who use huge swaths of bandwidth on public Wi-Fi networks to stream music or video. It makes it tough for the rest of us who are simply trying to log on, check email & FB, and browse a couple of sites such as this. Happened two days ago at a coffee shop, causing me to switch to my cellular network.

Why is this any different than taking two parking spaces, buying one coffee, grabbing a bunch of napkins & sugar packets to take home, sitting solo at a four top when others are waiting, and staying all day?

[Snowman]

Not wanting to start a flame war, but one of my pet peeves is people who use huge swaths of bandwidth on public Wi-Fi networks to stream music or video. It makes it tough for the rest of us who are simply trying to log on, check email & FB, and browse a couple of sites such as this. Happened two days ago at a coffee shop, causing me to switch to my cellular network.

Why is this any different than taking two parking spaces, buying one coffee, grabbing a bunch of napkins & sugar packets to take home, sitting solo at a four top when others are waiting, and staying all day?

While I am not recommending doing either on public networks, streaming audio is nothing compared to video.

[frontallobotomy]

I listen to Pandora at work and I'm not hogging the bandwidth, at least nobody has said I was.

[Jon27]

Does anyone know how much data is used listening to Pandora on smart phones? I prefer to listen to it in the car but don't want to use up my data plan.

I had to use my cell phone to stream my XM subscription in the car in October for the entire month. I imagine it's about the same usage. I normally use around half a gig in a normal month with no audio streaming. In October, I used almost 2 gigs. That was for maybe 45 minutes a day in usage not counting the weekends. I'm sure if you Google it, there are calculators out there for this kind of thing. Hope this helps.

[frontallobotomy]

Thanks.... I knew it used some but didn't know it was such a data hog.

[kelroy55]

You won't use your data plan if you have home wifi. I only have 3 GBs of data available and I only used 41% of it last month. Of course, I wasn't listening to Pandora everyday so get the 3g watch dog app and just pay attention to your data.

I listened to Pandora for an hour and according to the 3g watch dog I use 17.5 megs. I can see how it can add up.