Opera Max can cut music streaming bandwidth by half

NORDIC BROWSER COMPANY Opera has announced a new version of Opera Max, its data compression tool for mobile that is created to reduce customers’ data usage for intensive tasks like music streaming.

Last month, Opera Max added music compression on a couple of services: Pandora, Slacker, and SoundCloud.

Opera says it optimizes music streams using Rocket Optimizer – a data-optimization service Opera acquired when it bought Skyfire in 2013. As Android Headlines said in its report, this is a great move in helping users cut back data usage by assisting them in managing it. Nevertheless, the report added that subscribers can look forward to the additional apps of Opera Max aside from the ones that were mentioned.

Last but not least, developers state that Opera Max does not analyze or store private data and that savings are based on sampling of US beta users. It supports MP3 and MP4 streams and can convert them to the more efficient AAC+ codec.

While that is the case, it works equally fine when connected to Wireless networks, and since it does not differentiate traffic, will compress regular web data and video data as well at the same time.

The data savings feature offered by Opera Max works on both Wi-Fi and cellular data connections.

The new feature has been designed specifically for users who listen to audio streams on the go, as doing so can burn through a user’s monthly mobile bandwidth quota quickly depending on the plan. “Pandora, Slacker Radio, Gaana, Saavn, Mix Radio and YouTube Music are the first six apps that passed our quality-assurance test, but we will support more music-streaming apps in the near future”. It will be interesting to see if more apps are added in the future, including Apple Music, for example.

Neither Spotify or Google Play Music, the two biggest players in the Android music streaming market, or Deezer, a European service that is gaining traction, are now supported, however. Opera Max is the first Android app in world to optimize streaming video and music apps. The company speculates that the data-saving app will be installed in as many as 100 million devices by 2017.