Apple Music & Battery Usage? 6 Questions (Answered)

Apple Music allows users to explore their musical tastes wherever they go due to the Apple Music app, which you can launch from your mobile device.

Whether you’re streaming a brand new album from your favorite artist or playing a playlist that you downloaded for offline listening, Apple Music will draw power from your mobile’s battery.

In this article, we look at how Apple Music may affect the battery of your mobile device:

Here’s Everything You Need to Know About Apple Music & Battery Usage

The Apple Music app has reportedly drained far more battery than users expected. Excessive battery drain can occur even when the app runs in the background. To mitigate battery loss with Apple Music, one should prevent sync issues from occurring with iCloud or Apple Watch.

Table of Contents

1. How Much Battery Does Apple Music Use?

Listening to audio content with Apple Music will affect your battery, but what concerns most users is how fast it will drain the power on their device.

It’s tricky to hone in on exactly how much battery drainage will occur on your particular device as there is a range of factors that need to be considered, such as:

The exact model and age of the device you are using.
The version of the operating system that is running on your device.
How you use Apple Music (Actively browsing, streaming, and downloading).

However, numerous reports show that the Apple Music app can and has seriously hampered battery power on users’ devices.

A glance over a few forums on Apple’s website will reveal that the app reportedly uses up to 53% of battery power. Yet, it can also be noted that others will run for almost 20 hours.

There are certainly differences in the experiences users have with Apple Music draining the battery on their phone, however:

“Hundreds of users are posting explanations and screenshots showing that Apple Music is using up a large portion of their battery. Reddit user ritty84, for example, shows that Apple Music accounts for 95 percent of their battery usage…”

[Source: LifeWire.com]

95% is an enormous amount of battery usage, and it would make anyone consider whether listening to music on their mobile is worth the headache.

However, there may be reasons why these users are having such bad luck…

2. Why is Apple Music Draining my Phone’s Battery?

Users have noted excessive drain to their batteries even while the Apple Music app is not in use. This means that Apple Music’s simple background activity is in overdrive.

Since this problem is widespread (across all models), it stands to reason that there should be a common issue at its cause.

Two likely issues that are causing Apple Music to drain your battery are:

Persistent connection problems with Apple Watch.
Continuous unsuccessful downloads from iCloud.

Why Apple Watch & Apple Music Cause Battery Drain

If you have an Apple Watch, the chance is that you want it to be connected, paired, and synced with your media.

Apple Music understands this, and the app will attempt to sync up as soon as it is connected.

However, suppose your phone is unable to connect to your Apple Watch. In that case, a vicious cycle will occur, with the phone continually trying to make a connection to the Apple Watch and Apple Music trying to sync media.

If you don’t have an Apple Watch and your battery drains rapidly, the problem may be with iCloud.

You should also take a look at our article about why Garmin Watches are the better choice.

Why iCloud & Apple Music Cause Battery Drain

Similarly to the problem above, this is a situation in which a continual loop of a process kills battery life on your device.

In this case, when your iPhone cannot successfully download content from iCloud, be it a playlist or album that you want to play through Apple Music, it will attempt the download again, then again, and so on.

This continual process will have disastrous consequences for your phone’s battery life for the day.

3. What can you do to Make Apple Music use Less Battery?

If you’re fed up with sinking battery levels while using Apple Music, then here’s a list of solutions that may help reduce the amount of battery Apple Music uses:

Sync Music With Computer
- This is a great way to prevent the sync loops mentioned previously from occurring on your device.
Disable Apple Music Automatic Downloads
- Stopping any background activity such as this will reduce battery consumption.
Turn Off Music Background App Refresh
- Again, denying this background process will stop Apple Music from draining your battery.
Switch Off Mobile Data
- Ceasing connection to the internet will ensure Apple Music is only playing songs already downloaded, saving your phone the power needed to stream.

If the above solutions don’t fix the problem, then you can always resort to the classic tried and tested options found below:

Force Quit Apple Music
Restart iPhone
Delete the Apple Music app and redownload

Please also look at our article, 10 Reasons why Apple Music is Glitching or Cutting Out!

4. Does Spotify use More Battery than Apple Music?

You may want to reconsider if you’ve been thinking about whether it’s time to switch out your subscription from Apple Music to Spotify because of battery drain.

Despite the two giants of music streaming being great contenders for all your audio needs, Spotify does not have the edge regarding battery consumption.

In fact, Spotify is actually a serious battery hogger, and research conducted found that Spotify was:

“(…) draining battery at alarming 55% and 23% faster than Apple Music and Google Play Music, respectively.”

[Source: by MobileEnerlytics.com]

5. Does Listening to Music Drain Apple Watch Battery?

A few factors will determine how much your Apple Watch’s battery will drain when listening to music.

However, Apple has given estimates on how long your Apple Watch will last while playing music via Bluetooth connection and from the Apple Watch storage.

The Apple Watch Ultra should last up to 20 hours while playing music from Apple Watch storage.
The Apple Watch Series 8 should last up to 11 hours while playing music from Apple Watch storage.
The Apple Watch SE should last up to 10 hours while playing music from Apple Watch storage.
Of course, these durations will vary depending on what other activities and processes you are conducting on your Apple Watch simultaneously.

6. Does Downloaded Music use Less Battery than Streaming?

Downloading songs, albums, or playlists you listen to regularly makes a lot of sense.

Not only do you not need to be connected to the internet to listen to what you want, but it also takes some strain off the battery.

Think of it this way – if you’re playing songs straight from your phone that you’ve previously downloaded, then your phone only has to do one thing – it just has to play the song stored on your device without any other process involved.

However, if you’re streaming music, your phone needs to be connected to the internet.

You can save your battery life by disconnecting from the internet and simply listening offline; trust us, your battery will thank you.

Please also check out our article on why Apple Music buffers!