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Slacker seems to be using too much...

Hi everyone, hopefully I'm posting this is in the right place... if not, mod's please move to the proper place... So anyhow, I have AT&T as my mobile carrier with 3 smartphones and 1 tablet. I've just really started getting into streaming music through app's like pandora and Slacker radio. Last night at work, I decided to try out Slacker pro (the $3.99/month deal) because I DESPISE having a limit on skips. After using it for I would guesstimate around 5hrs total streaming time, it seems to have used too much data. I have triple checked the streaming rate which is set at 64Kbps. By my math, and everything I've been able to find online, I SHOULD have used approx. 0.1375GB (140.625MBps), however when I check the actual usage via my phone's data tracker as well as my carrier's tracker, it's showing I used 1.39GB just on slacker alone! I already have taken into account my other apps that have used data in the same time period and subtracted them from total usage during these hours and that 1.39 is what I come up with every time I check... Has anyone else had similar issues with Slacker???
 
Welcome to the site :)

Haven't used Slacker, but is it also downloading other media like cover art for songs? Even if it is I don't think that would add up to over 1GB in 5 hours.

1.39GB streamed over 5 hours is about 600Kbps.

Also, moved to Android Applications :)

Thank you for the reply and making sure I was in the right place! lol

It does download cover art for each band, but I like you don't believe even with that, this app should be such a hog. I just ran a couple 15min tests (ran slacker for 15min, then multiplied the recorded data usage by 4) and I'm coming up with a pretty consistent 60MB/hour!! I just have a feeling I'm doing something wrong because I couldn't see an app that's such a data hog being so dang popular. Only thing I really know to do at this point, is when I go to work tomorrow, make note of what the current usage is showing for slacker, then keep track of the exact times I use it and see what the usage goes up to.
 
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Could be that Slacker is actually using a higher data rate than it states. e.g. 256kbps. What's the sound quality like, because when I've heard music streamed at only 64kbps, it doesn't sound very good to me and quite poor, but ok for spoken word though IMO.

Depending on what phone you've actually got, it might have a real-time data rate feature, that shows the actual bit-rate of data going through. Or there's apps that can do that anyway, It might be worth you checking it, when running Slacker. I can't check Slacker myself of course, because I'm not in the US.
 
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Could be that Slacker is actually using a higher data rate than it states. e.g. 256kbps. What's the sound quality like, because when I've heard music streamed at only 64kbps, it doesn't sound very good to me and quite poor, but ok for spoken word though IMO.

Depending on what phone you've actually got, it might have a real-time data rate feature, that shows the actual bit-rate of data going through. Or there's apps that can do that anyway, It might be worth you checking it, when running Slacker. I can't check Slacker myself of course, because I'm not in the US.

As far as sound quality goes, it's not bad at all. I've checked all through my phone's system info and it doesn't have any type of real-time tracking, only updated at certain intervals...

Let me throw out a curve ball here now... Today, after doing tons of reading and even more math (my head hurts!!) I downloaded Spotify to give it a try because it has a family plan. Now, it is set at 96kbps bitrate. After hours upon hours of research that shows it should only be using approx. 12KBps/42.197MB per hour of streaming. I downloaded a data tracker and have reset it multiple times, then streaming for 20-30min and it show's that on average, it is burning right around 104MB/hour of streaming. I'm totally confused with all this crap lol I'm going to try and download one of those real-time tracker apps and see what happens.
 
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So I have a little update... I found an app that let's me monitor my total bitrate in real-time. I closed all app's except for Spotify first, then Slacker... What I found was that while currently listening to a song, there is VERY LITTLE data transfer, however, when a song is either skipped, or just in between every song altogether, the tx rate spikes at 2.5MB/s for a split second, then drops to around 700KB/s, then 50KB/s, then back to zero... Perhaps if I let it play for a little while over a few hours, the bitrate will somewhat balance itself out as far as how much it's actually using??
 
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when a song is either skipped, or just in between every song altogether, the tx rate spikes at 2.5MB/s for a split second, then drops to around 700KB/s, then 50KB/s, then back to zero...
My guess is it's downloading the entire song when it first starts playing then doesn't transfer data until the next song needs to be downloaded.

Do you skip a lot of songs? That might be why the data amount is so high, a song downloads in 5-10 seconds and you skip it but the entire song was already transferred to your phone.
 
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My guess is it's downloading the entire song when it first starts playing then doesn't transfer data until the next song needs to be downloaded.

Do you skip a lot of songs? That might be why the data amount is so high, a song downloads in 5-10 seconds and you skip it but the entire song was already transferred to your phone.

That's what my guess is also after finally getting to see the tx rate real-time (thanks Mikedt for the info on checking into that!).. I can't lie, I'm a music junky and I'm CONSTANTLY skipping songs, even ones I like but might not be in that particular mood lol.
 
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