Google music background data?

[ireknole]

I use Google music solely with Android auto, so that's why I'm posting this here. Why is background data usage so high?

I downloaded all my music to my sd card and haven't used Google music to play songs not already in my library. Occasionally I'll call out a song in my library and it will play a song not in my library since I'm on the all access trial. It also seems to start a radio station based on that song and queue up tracks not in my library.

My primary streaming apps are Amazon Music and Spotify. I've been using Amazon for an hour a day these past few days . Here is my data usage history:

The majority of that data usage is background. I have "download on wifi only" on, so that can't be it. Does anyone have any suggestions? Is it doing something when it queues up songs? Thank you!

Edit: I did have "automatically cache" checked and I think that was the problem. I unchecked it and I'll monitor my data usage from there. If anyone has any other suggestions though, I'm all ears. I don't mind streaming music, so I don't need it turned off, but over 1gb seemed high for two weeks of streaming and most of that was from download tracks.

 

[Theodore Clark]

I've read that even if you have the music locally on your phone it will still play the streamed version from Googles servers. What I did was turn off "streaming over wifi" so it didn't allow it to access any streaming while using mobile data. I ended up just switching to Spotify anyways as it has many more options in android auto.

 

[ireknole]

Thanks! I was wondering if that was the case. That's a big issue for me, since I want it to play the downloaded version if it's downloaded (who wouldn't?).

I've turned streaming off before but I noticed that the "instant mixes" where it would keep playing songs after you requested a song to play didn't work. I thought that was supported to work with your own music and not just the "all access" music.

I also love Spotify, but hate it on android auto. I frequently get a "Spotify is not working right now" message, and it sometimes freezes and doesn't respond to the steering wheel controls.