Spotify’s Newest Feature Would’ve Been a Godsend on My Last Flight

I recently endured a trans-Atlantic flight without Wi-Fi. And, stupidly, I didn’t download any of my Spotify playlists beforehand. But I may not need to take any action the next time I fly, as Spotify is rolling out an Offline Backup feature that automatically saves music to an offline playlist.

Technically speaking, Spotify’s cache system already provides some offline redundancy. The Spotify app automatically saves several gigabytes of song, artist, and image data to your device to alleviate temporary internet dropouts and reduce bandwidth consumption. The new Offline Backup feature makes cached songs readily available through a dedicated playlist—it’s a more useful implementation of a cache system.

Offline Backup can be saved as a playlist in your Library. Plus, it can be filtered by artist, mood, or genre. You could even use the Offline Backup playlist to observe your listening habits or rediscover recently-heard tracks. It’s based on an ever-changing collection of cached data, so it evolves as you listen to new music.

You don’t need to set up Offline Backup. It’s enabled by default and will appear on your Home feed whenever you’re offline (though Library access must be activated within the Offline Backup playlist). That said, Offline Backup doesn’t work when you have Spotify’s Downloads feature disabled. Go into the app’s settings, open the “Data Saving and Offline” (or “Storage” on iOS) menu, and turn Offline Listening on.

Note that this feature will contribute to Spotify’s cache utilization. Clearing Spotify’s cache can free up several gigabytes of smartphone storage, but doing so will limit Offline Backup’s capabilities and increase Spotify’s bandwidth consumption when on mobile data.

Offline Backup is rolling out to Android and iOS this week with support for Android Auto and CarPlay. It requires a Premium subscription. This feature does not support podcasts, although Spotify can auto-download new episodes from any podcasts you follow.

Source: Spotify