• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

T mobile free unlimited music not really free

MelonSplitter

MelonSplitter

Member
Data usage for 1 hour of Google Play music cost me 400 mb's! The music is free but you pay for album art work and commercials with no way to disable album artwork. What a joke,on me that is.
 
Ah, I thought you were just talking about Google Play music. So that's where I got confused. :)

I'm not sure how feasible it would be for T-Mobile to detect the associated traffic that goes along the music stream - I mean, it's easy to see the packets that are actually streaming media inbound from Pandora's servers, for instance, but the ads and album art come from a different place. I don't think there would be an easy identifier that T-Mobile could key off of. It's probably just something that you'll need to plan around.
 
From one of T-Mobile's docs:

Things to keep in mind:

  • To stream music so you're not using up your data, you need to use the specific music streaming application on your device (and not stream to devices using Smartphone Mobile Hotspot/tethering).
  • Most music streaming includes small amounts of non-music streaming data, such as album art and pic advertisements. This data does use data from your high-speed data bucket, and the amount of data varies by streaming partner and the device being used. If you stream music for hours at a time, you can expect to see an increase in your data usage.
  • You should also know that Music Freedom only works on T-Mobile’s network and not while roaming.
https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-10969
 
AnciusD said:
From one of T-Mobile's docs:

Things to keep in mind:

  • To stream music so you're not using up your data, you need to use the specific music streaming application on your device (and not stream to devices using Smartphone Mobile Hotspot/tethering).
  • Most music streaming includes small amounts of non-music streaming data, such as album art and pic advertisements. This data does use data from your high-speed data bucket, and the amount of data varies by streaming partner and the device being used. If you stream music for hours at a time, you can expect to see an increase in your data usage.
  • You should also know that Music Freedom only works on T-Mobile’s network and not while roaming.
https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-10969
Click to expand...
Nice find! :thumbsupdroid:
 
codesplice said:
Nice find! :thumbsupdroid:
Click to expand...

I'm new to T-Mobile and heard about Music Freedom but didn't know what it was and found that. I'm a fan of Fox Sports Radio on iHeart Radio but it was chewing up my data on my other data plan so I gave it up. And then I discovered Music Freedom!
clear.png
 
Last edited:
400 MB seems like a lot of data to be used *just* for album art in Play Music. Any idea how much data was used total (that is, including the music streaming) in that streaming session?
 
Nothing under Android Settings > Data usage?

Edit: I'll clear my music cache, reset my data usage counter, and see how much data I use listening to music on my drive home tonight. :)
 
Usage for about a half hour of streaming in Play Music. I even made sure to use the Radio function to maximize the amount of album art that had to be downloaded. There are a lot of variables here, but I would estimate maybe 120MB per hour of streaming.

I didn't think to try a #932# before and after to compare how T-Mobile meters the usage.
 

Attachments

  • 1423611019497.jpg
    1423611019497.jpg
    68.4 KB · Views: 304
Oh yeah, #932# might not be accurate for me (prepaid)...

It's only the second day of my cycle, but I'm pretty sure I used more than that.
 

Attachments

  • 1423611376864.jpg
    1423611376864.jpg
    42.6 KB · Views: 210
For 15 minutes I used 60 mbs. I cant use this. Whats the point in advertising "Free Unlimited music with no data usage" ? Am I the only one complaining about this?
 
I use Google Play Music with an All Access subscription exclusively, and it hasn't cost me a megabyte of data thus far, album art and all.

You need to check the usage on your T-Mobile account. Of course any bandwidth meter you check on the phone is going to show data was transmitted. The phone is only reporting actual usage, it doesn't know or care about any carrier perks.
 
iheartradio doesn't really play ad's if you make your own custom station. They have small graphic ads every so often that you have to X out of but that's it. I stream a lot of iheartradio and only see my data usage go up to maybe 200 megs per month at the most. I'm on wifi most of the time though. Only time I really use data is in the car when I stream it to my radio.
 
MelonSplitter said:
For 15 minutes I used 60 mbs.
Click to expand...

Total? (music + album art)

Still, that should be 240MB in an hour (twice what I'm seeing for some reason, but okay) - no way that 400MB of that 240MB could be album art. ;)

You may want to talk to someone at T-Mobile to see if they can take a look at your account + usage and better explain what's going on. I really don't get how album art could account for that much data.

How much data is on your Simple Choice plan? Are you regularly bouncing against your limit because of the way Music Freedom tallies your data? I've got 5GB of data on my plan without Music Freedom and very rarely hit that limit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom