Thanks, guys. I checked into it today. The premium Spotify lets you download anything you want(?).
The free Spotify doesn't, but it DOES let you download podcasts for offline listening!
So, I get to keep my cheap $20, 1GB data plan and don't have to pay anything to listen to podcasts on my long dog walks.
Here are the Spotify podcasts I've "followed" today. Click the links to open in Spotify, so you can follow them.
On Texas Football
3rd & Longhorn
Inside Texas Football
I also discovered that I don't have to manually download anything.
You can actually configure Spotify to auto-download all new podcasts!
To do that, you just click the three-dot menu:
Then, enable the auto-download option:
If you don't want to auto-download, then just click the download button on each podcast you want to listen to.
A green checkbox indicates an episode you've downloaded:
I tested by downloading some episodes.
Then, I turned on "Airplane mode" and pressed play.
Nothing happened.
I turned off airplane mode and clicked play and it started playing.
But I wanted to make sure I was getting offline playback.
So, I turned off WiFi and Data and clicked play and it still works!
No hiccups during todays hour-long dog walk even though I had WiFi & Data disabled the entire time.
Thanks!