Opera Max now saves you up to 50% of the data used to stream music from certain sites

posted by Alan F. / Nov 23, 2015, 10:59 AM

Opera Max now saves you up to 50% of the data used to stream music from certain sites

Back in August, Opera Max announced that those using its data compression app could save as much as 50% of the data they normally expend to watch YouTube and Netflix. Users experience no drop off in video quality, and see less buffering. Now, Opera Max has turned its attention to music streaming. Those listening to streamed tunes via apps like YouTube Music, Pandora, Slacker Radio, Gaana and Saavn, can save up to 50% of the data they normally use to hear their favorite songs from these providers.

According to Opera, listening to streaming music or an online radio station will eat up 1GB of data in nine hours. You could go right through your monthly data cap without even giving it a moment's thought. While the five music streamers named above have passed Opera's QA test, it plans on adding additional apps "in the near future." That will make Opera Max even more valuable as a data saving tool.

Besides saving data, the Opera Max app will also keep track of data usage over both cellular and Wi-Fi. This helps users see how much data they have consumed on a daily or monthly basis, so that they can have a better grip on their account. If you find yourself constantly exceeding your monthly data allowance, paying overages or getting throttled, this is an app that you need to install on your phone.

"More and more people love listening to their favorite music with apps; however, these apps are among the major data hogs consuming users’ mobile data quickly. Now, we have added audio compression for these music apps so that people will feel free to stream music without having to look constantly for available, free Wi-Fi coverage. This is particularly helpful for users with limited data plans."-Sergey Lossev, Product Manager, Opera Software

Opera Max is a free download from the Google Play Store, which you can install by clicking on this link.

source: Opera

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13 Comments

1. Hexa-core

Posts: 2131; Member since: Aug 11, 2015

There is no way to save data when browsing ads-infested sites like PA!!!

posted on Nov 23, 2015, 11:03 AM 4

6. Tizo101

Posts: 539; Member since: Jun 05, 2015

opera begs to differ.

posted on Nov 23, 2015, 1:17 PM 1

2. torr310

Posts: 1656; Member since: Oct 27, 2011

But Opera does not provide good browsing experience to me. I personally love the web site rendering of Mercury the most and its two finger gesture to open/close tabs. Though they didn't update it for months and some crashes.

posted on Nov 23, 2015, 11:42 AM 0

4. Kary1

Posts: 300; Member since: Jun 26, 2015

This is not the browser.

posted on Nov 23, 2015, 12:29 PM 1

10. mafiaprinc3

Posts: 585; Member since: May 07, 2012

it's not a browser it's a seperate android app,I had it before my smpartphone died on me. It's a really good app.you should give it a try. you can change how much you wany to compress data(eg,high medium and low).monitor history of data usage for each app etc best of al it really works

posted on Nov 23, 2015, 9:45 PM 0

3. Kary1

I'm very skeptical that you could save so much given that the data is already fairly compressed.

posted on Nov 23, 2015, 11:43 AM 0

8. Kary1

From another article it converts the stream to an AAC+ format. That can apparently save data but also have some downsides.

posted on Nov 23, 2015, 2:33 PM 0

5. Carl3000

Posts: 240; Member since: Oct 11, 2014

This thing does save data. Project Fi user here and through normal web browsing I eat about 30mb a day in data and with this app I only used about 15mb. There is a catch though.... You must keep it running and it eats battery fairly quickly so I'd suggest only using it when you have your charger but no WiFi.