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How much Data does Pandora radio use?

zizzlfied

Newbie
I was just wondering because of Verizons data cap and I do not want to get anywhere near it. So does anyone have a idea of how much data it uses?
 
Streaming audio estimated at 2 hours a day, can use 3.52 GB a month.

00smurf

http://www.verizonwireless.com/splash_includes/datacalculator.html

Used to calculate.


I'm not sure how accurate that is. I listen to Pandora just about every night (roughly 7 hours, more on weekends) and i average between 3-4GB per month. My wifi is broken so it's ALL data. I'm also constantly on the Internet and even downloading stuff.

If you don't have it already, get the my verizon data usage widget and place it on your homescreen. If your phone is rooted, it may not work with some roms.
 
I use Pandora, YouTube, download, search,and everything else and use 13GB a month. So your answer is a lot but connect to wifi whenever you can.
 
I use Pandora quite a bit at work. My last billing cycle the app used 185MB of bandwidth. YMMV of course. There's a "usage" monitor in ICS.
 
Yeah I don't think Pandora uses all that much. With streaming 4 hours per day, 4 days a week, I will just crest 2GB, and I would guess between .5-1GB of that is pandora, based on my usage when I am not streaming.
 
Pandora states (in their help section) that their mobile streaming service transmits at 64k AAC+. That means 64 kb of data is used every second.

If we translate that into Mb/h we get 28.8 MB/h.
Convert kilobits/sec (kbps) to megabytes/hour (MB/hr) | Category : bandwidth | Unit Conversion Center

Let's be conservative and round up to 30 MB/h
The next question should be...

How many hours of music are in 1 GB?
1000MB / 30 MB/h ~ 33.3h

So you get 33 hours of music per Gigabyte of data.
That equates to roughly 1 hour of listening time per day if you only have a 1 GB data plan.

This means the number of GB's you have for the data plan directly co-relates to the number of hours per day you can listen to music.

A 4 GB data plan would have a little over 120 h of listening time or 4 hours per day.

I hope that helps.
 
This question has become important for me for the simple reason that data prices have priced me out of using video programs. I have read that Pandora data use is higher than other radio apps. I don't remember where I read it. They did give data figures for a month that were said to be provided by use information provided by the installed apps.

Based on that information, I went with a different app than Pandora, and managed to blow the figure provided in the article out of the water in two days.

My calculations are about what the previous replyer stated, about 30MB per hour. This being said, I have a 5G plan and am worried that when I lose my Wi-Fi access I am going to have to go back to using a phone that is, well just a phone.

No more decent talk radio, no more decent podcast. Tech futures are looking pretty bleak... Through these Verizon colored glasses that they seem to insist that I wear.
 
Thought I'd post my stats to help anyone who isn't as mathematically minded (like me) . I play Pandora Monday - Friday from 8:00 am till about 5:30 pm, though I do pause periodically through the day so it isn't a solid 9 1/2 hrs - probably closer to 7 1/2 - 8. My phone is old so I rarely use any other apps, which means my data is primarily Pandora. I used 2.7 gigs on my last bill (2,822,995 k, to be precise lol).
 
Pandora states (in their help section) that their mobile streaming service transmits at 64k AAC+. That means 64 kb of data is used every second.

If we translate that into Mb/h we get 28.8 MB/h.
Convert kilobits/sec (kbps) to megabytes/hour (MB/hr) | Category : bandwidth | Unit Conversion Center

Let's be conservative and round up to 30 MB/h
The next question should be...

How many hours of music are in 1 GB?
1000MB / 30 MB/h ~ 33.3h

So you get 33 hours of music per Gigabyte of data.
That equates to roughly 1 hour of listening time per day if you only have a 1 GB data plan.

This means the number of GB's you have for the data plan directly co-relates to the number of hours per day you can listen to music.

A 4 GB data plan would have a little over 120 h of listening time or 4 hours per day.

I hope that helps.
Nice math #my fave
 
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