Music streaming services like Apple Music have become incredibly popular in recent years, allowing users instant access to millions of songs right from their smartphones. However, some users have noticed that Apple Music takes up a surprising amount of storage space on their devices. This article will examine why Apple Music uses so much storage, explain where all that space is going, and provide tips to reduce the storage footprint.
How Apple Music Stores Songs
When you stream a song on Apple Music, it downloads a cached version of that song to your device’s storage. This allows Apple Music to play songs instantly without needing to re-download each time, and enables offline listening for subscribers [1].
Specifically, Apple Music downloads audio files in the 256 kbps AAC format. When you play a song, it accesses the cached version rather than streaming it each time. Any songs marked for offline listening are also automatically downloaded for playback without an internet connection [2].
This cached audio allows for quicker startup and less reliance on consistent connectivity. However, the cached songs take up storage space on your device until deleted. Users have limited ability to manage this cache, leading to potentially large amounts of used storage.
Caching Songs for Offline Listening
One of the main reasons Apple Music takes up a lot of storage space is because it automatically caches or downloads songs for offline listening (source). When you add a song to your library or playlist in Apple Music, it gets stored locally on your device so you can listen to it even when you don’t have an internet connection.
Apple Music does this caching in the background automatically when you are connected to WiFi. So over time, you may not even realize how much music content has been downloaded as more and more gets added to your library (source). This means the more songs you add for offline listening, the more storage space Apple Music will take up.
Large Song File Sizes
One reason Apple Music takes up a significant amount of storage is because it uses high quality audio files, especially for downloaded songs. According to this Apple discussion thread, Apple Music downloads songs in an uncompressed ALAC format which can be over 60MB per song. While streaming songs uses a more compressed AAC format, any songs you download for offline listening will be in the larger ALAC format by default.
So if you download a lot of songs to listen to offline, the file sizes can quickly add up. Even compressed AAC files may range from 5-10MB each depending on length and bitrate. So if you have hundreds or thousands of downloaded songs, it’s no surprise that Apple Music takes up gigabytes of storage.
Unfortunately there is no setting to lower the quality or use more compression when downloading songs. So the only way to reduce the storage footprint is to be more selective about downloading music for offline listening.
Automatic Downloads
One of the reasons Apple Music takes up so much storage space is its feature that automatically downloads songs, albums and playlists it thinks you might enjoy listening to (Apple Music (Automatic Downloads) – Discussions – Apple Community). When you enable “Automatic Downloads” in the settings, Apple Music will download recommendations, new releases from artists you follow, and mixes you might like based on your listening history and preferences. This continues in the background even when you aren’t actively using the app.
While the recommendations can be useful, all those downloaded songs, albums and playlists quickly eat up your storage. And with no easy way to find and delete the automatically downloaded content, it just continues accumulating over time. According to users, the Automatic Downloads option also gets frequently unchecked and stops working properly after iOS and MacOS updates (Apple Music “Automatic Downloads” broken on Sonoma beta2 … – Apple Developer Forums). So this feature tends to download far more than necessary, exacerbating the storage issues.
Synced Library
One major factor in Apple Music’s storage usage is the option to sync your personal music library across devices. When you enable Apple Music Library sync, any songs you have saved locally on one device (such as your iPhone) get automatically downloaded to your other devices that are signed into the same Apple ID (like your iPad or MacBook). This allows you to access your full music collection from any device, without having to manually manage your downloads. However, it also means that all those downloaded songs take up storage space.
Apple Music will download high-quality 256kbps AAC versions of your songs for syncing, even if you originally had lower bitrate versions saved. So syncing can significantly increase the size of your music library. For example, if you have 50GB of music saved locally on your iPhone, enabling sync could cause your iPad to download another 50+GB in order to match that library. The more devices you have, the more duplicate copies get created.
If you want to reduce the storage impact, you can turn off Library sync in your Apple Music settings on each device. Just be aware that you’ll no longer have seamless access to your full library when offline. Any synced songs already downloaded will remain on your device and continue taking up space until manually deleted. But at least new songs won’t automatically sync without your permission.
Sources:
Turning off Apple Music ‘Library Sync’ Resolved 30GB+ System Data Storage Issue on iPad
byu/houseofsum inAppleMusic
Cached Playlists and Radio Stations
When you create customized playlists or listen to curated radio stations on Apple Music, it will download and cache these playlists and stations for offline listening. This allows you to access your favorite playlists and stations even when you don’t have an internet connection. However, this constant caching can quickly eat up storage space on your device.
Apple Music will automatically download up to 100 playlists for offline listening [1]. Even if you don’t manually download a playlist, just listening to it once can cause Apple Music to cache it. Additionally, any radio station you listen to will begin caching songs on-demand for future listening [2]. With each song taking up several megabytes, your customized playlists and stations can easily amount to gigabytes of cached data.
While caching provides a better listening experience, it’s constantly using up your storage in the background. The only way to prevent this is to manually disable caching for specific playlists and stations. Unfortunately there is no global setting to limit caching, which can make managing storage a challenge.
No Easy Way to Delete
Apple Music does not make it easy or obvious for users to delete cached or downloaded content. Unlike with locally stored music, there is no simple “delete” option for clearing downloaded Apple Music songs. The Apple Music app does not have a setting or menu where users can view and manage cached or downloaded content.
Apple likely designed the service this way to provide a seamless listening experience across devices. By automatically downloading songs and playlists in the background, Apple Music aims to allow instant access to your library even when offline. However, this convenience comes at the cost of increased storage usage.
To delete downloaded Apple Music content, users must go through a multi-step process of turning off iCloud Music Library, clearing the app’s cache or storage, then re-enabling iCloud synchronization. This is not intuitive and many users are unaware such options exist. Apple could better inform users and provide simple cache management settings within the app.
According to discussions on Apple’s support forums, manually deleting cached Apple Music files from iPhone or iPad storage also does not remove those songs from your library (source). The only way to fully clear downloaded content is via the iCloud Music Library toggling method. This further shows Apple Music’s system for persistent caching without easy user controls.
Tips to Reduce Storage Use
There are several ways to reduce how much storage Apple Music takes up on your device:
- Turn off “Automatic Downloads” in settings so that new songs and playlists added to your library don’t download right away. You can manually download content as needed instead.
- Remove any synced libraries like “My Music” to stop Apple Music from copying your entire music collection. This also prevents automatic downloads.
- Go to Settings > General > [Your Device] Storage > Music and delete any cached or downloaded content you no longer need. This clears up a lot of space.
- Disable “Sync Library” under Settings > Music to prevent Apple Music from automatically syncing additions and edits to your library across devices.
- Restrict “Cellular Data” usage for Music under Settings to prevent large downloads over cellular networks.
- Delete cached and downloaded playlists or radio stations you no longer need to listen to.
While there’s no built-in way to limit storage usage, being more selective about downloads and removing cached content helps reduce the amount of space Apple Music takes up. Turning off background processes like Autodownload prevents surprise large downloads. With some management, you can better optimize storage.
Sources:
https://techanoa.com/reduce-apple-music-storage/
https://tecnodose.com/reduce-apple-music-storage/
Conclusion
Apple Music can end up taking a lot of storage space on your device due to its automatic downloading and caching of songs, playlists, and radio stations for offline listening. To summarize:
- Apple Music automatically downloads any added songs, albums, or playlists for offline access.
- It also caches songs you listen to in order to improve streaming.
- Downloaded songs are stored at their full high-quality file size.
- Cached and synced libraries and playlists also take up room.
With large libraries or playlists, the downloads can quickly add up and eat through your storage. But you’re not helpless – you can manage your downloads, disable syncing, delete cached content, and enable storage saving options under Music settings. Being aware of how Apple Music handles storage can help you maximize your device’s capacity.