Battery drain has been a persistent bugbear for iPhone owners in recent years, and that looks unlikely to change given Apple’s risky decision to launch the iPhone 12 range with smaller batteries. I find that Spotify rarely drains the battery more than the standard Music app when playing offline, and only slightly more when streaming on 3G/4G. I do find that when it's set.
Since Pandora first launched music streaming 15 years ago, the music streaming category of mobile apps has become crowded with over a dozen popular alternatives today, many of which are undergoing rapid revisions. For example, Spotify releases a new version of its mobile app every two weeks. As a result, deciding on which music service to choose has become often difficult. In fact, a simple Google search for “Pandora vs. Spotify” today churns out over 4 million search results, which attempted direct comparisons of leading music streaming services along a multitude of dimensions, such as song selections, features, user experience, and business model.
Since battery drain is an important factor that affects user experience, we carried out a head-to-head comparison of the battery drain rate of 3 leading streaming music apps.
To isolate the impact of other apps running on the devices, we tested the battery draining rate of the recent versions of Pandora, Spotify and Google Play Music in the lab.
Our methodology for the test consists of three steps. In step 1, we measured the battery life in playing music in foreground and background, respectively. We uninstalled all the other third party apps from a Nexus 6 phone so that no other background task was running. We then put each of the three music apps in the streaming music mode to play music from a pre-selected music categories, under WiFi (see sidebar for details). We measured how long it takes to drain the entire battery for each app. The results are shown in the following graphs.
In Step 2, we measured how much time real users spend playing music in foreground and in the background using their smartphones. The analytics from Eagle of 15,000 Android users who has installed at least one of the three music apps above shows that 83% of the total music app usage is spent on playing music in the background. On average, users spend 10 minutes playing music in foreground and 49 minutes playing music in background per day.
Finally in Step 3, we calculated the expected battery life in playing music under typical user behavior, as the weighted average battery life of the above measured battery life when playing music in foreground and in background, weighted by the percentage foreground (17%) and background (83%) playing time measured on the 15,000 Android phones.
The results, shown above, show that Google Play Music drains over 2X less battery compared to Spotify, and Pandora drains 70% less battery than Spotify. In other words, for a music fan who spends a lot of time playing music on her smartphone, switching from Spotify to Google Play Music can extend the battery life and hence listening time by 2X!
We plan to benchmark the battery performance of other streaming music apps and we also welcome streaming music app vendors to repeat these experiments on different handsets following the above simple methodology.
I got my 2019 MBP 16' a week ago and ran into the same issue..3.5 hours of battery, so I started digging and got it corrected. Here's ALL the steps I took. Once I completed these steps, I let the MBP drain to 0% battery and recharged it.
My new battery time is about 9-10 hours. So, wanted to share this out for others.
- I've learned when I buy a new Mac the best first immediate step is to go in and do an internet recovery and erase the HD and reinstall MacOS. This way you're getting the latest version without having to install OS updates. Do this before installing anything..and install fresh. Not from Time Machine. Best steps are here..thanks to MacWorld!: https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac/reset-mac-3494564/
- System Settings>Energy Saver I checked the box 'Automatic Graphics switching'
- System Settings>Bluetooth>Advanced>Uncheck 'Allow Bluetooth devices wake this computer'
- System Settings>Notifications>Turn on Do Not Disturb>When Display is sleeping/When Screen is locked.
- Install TurboBoost Switcher (free app) This keeps your MBP from throttling up to turbo mode if you don't do high powered Pro-style apps
- Install gfxCard Status (free app or Pro for $$). This apps helps to keep your Graphics card mainly on the integrated graphics. https://gfx.io/
- Set the above steps into place and restart the MBP.
One thing to know is it takes about 3-4 battery cycles for the MBP battery to get 'set'.
NOW, with the above steps taken, reset the SMC and NVRAM/PRAM
Yes, ensure your Mac is plugged in to your power supply.
Spotify Battery Drain Macbook
Notebook computers with the T2 chip(yes this applies to the 16' MBP)
Before resetting the SMC:
- Shut down your Mac.
- Press and hold the power button for 10 seconds, then release the button.
- Wait a few seconds, then press the power button to turn on your Mac.
Spotify Drains Battery Macbook
To reset the SMC:
- Shut down your Mac with power plugged in.
- On your built-in keyboard, press and hold all of the following keys. Your Mac might turn on.
- Control on the left side of your keyboard
- Option (Alt) on the left side of your keyboard
- Shift on the right side of your keyboard
Keep holding all three keys for 7 seconds, then THEN press and hold the power button as well. If your Mac is on, it will turn off as you hold the keys.
Keep holding all four keys for another 7 seconds, then release them.
Wait a few seconds, then press the power button to turn on your Mac.
Resetting the NVRAM/PRAM
With the power supply plugged into the Mac, power it off. Reboot and immediately press and hold these four keys together:
Option, Command, P, and R. You can release the keys after about 20 seconds, during which your Mac might appear to restart.
- On Mac computers that play a startup sound, you can release the keys after the second startup sound.
- On Mac computers that have the Apple T2 Security Chip, you can release the keys after the Apple logo appears and disappears for the second time.
Now I'm working on getting that annoying speaker popping and crackling fixed. THEN it will be perfect.
Hope this helps!