Streamed music is great for having access to almost everything, but it isn’t always ideal when you’re on the move thanks to patchy data coverage and carrier data caps. While Apple didn’t mention it yesterday, it has now confirmed to Re/code that Apple Music supports offline listening. The feature is also listed in a feature checklist on Apple’s website.
Apple didn’t give any details, but offline listening is likely to work in the same way as Spotify Premium …
As an Apple Music member you can add anything from the Apple Music library — a song, an album or a video — to your collection. And that’s just the warm-up act. From there you can create the perfect playlist from anything you’ve added. You can save it for offline listening and take it on the road.
With Spotify Premium, you can select and download your music while you’re on WiFi. Spotify only allows the download if you have a valid subscription. Once the music is on your iPhone, you can continue to play it offline for up to 30 days, at which point Spotify requires you to go online again to confirm your subscription is still valid.
In practice, it’s very seamless: you’re exceedingly unlikely to be offline for anything even approaching 30 days – that protection is simply there to prevent someone subscribing for a month, downloading lots of albums and then continuing to have free access to them forever.
The feature checklist also confirms that you’ll be able to save Connect content – which will include demo tracks – for offline listening.
