How Much Digital Music?

[Jonathon Watkins]

In a <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=27295&postdays=0&postorder=asc&">recent post</a>, I reported that a new report said that the ideal size of music player would hold 1000 songs (around 4Gb). I questioned this and in the reply thread we had a good discussion about the pros and cons of different device sizes & options for enjoying digital music. Some folks said that people with more than 30Gb of music formed less than 1% of computer users. <br /><br />Now, rather than guessing about what the statistics are, I'd like to ask you guys about <b>your </b>music listening habits. A follow-up poll tomorrow will ask how what size of device you use to listen to this music while on the move. Today's question is, how much digital music do you have access to on your main computer / in total? It's the size in Gb I am interested in, rather than the number of songs, as this is a question about storage capacity. So, fire away! 8)

[Pony99CA]

I have slightly over 2 GB, but could have much more if I ripped my entire CD collection.

That said, here comes the mandatory nitpicking about the poll.... :D

First, some people won't be able to vote. For example, the poll says "up to 1 GB" of music, which technically would not include 1 GB. The next entry is 2 GB to 10 GB, so anybody with 1 GB to 2 GB is excluded.

Also, given the article's finding of 4 GB being what most people wanted, I think you should have centered around that number. 2-10 GB is too great a gap around 4 GB.

Finally, storage is dependent on the format and quality of the files. The article talked about how many songs people wanted, not how much storage was required, so this poll probably should have to.

Steve

[Ed Hansberry]

about 1,500 songs using VBR WMA9 at the tightest setting and almost at 3GB. :D

[xboxlord]

The question was how much music you have ACCESS to. Technically, if you have an internet connection, you have access to virtually unlimited amount of music. I know I'm being pessimistic, but that is just how I am!

Now what digital music do we actually already have? Well for that, being a more suitable question, I would say about 22GB. That is just because I have ripped all of my albums since I got my iPod. (I needed an excuse for spending that much, so I ripped them all).

I am starting to get a little ticked though because I'm thinking about buying a new computer, and I don't want to have to rip them all again. I guess I could use my iPod for storage until I buy a new one.

Either way, question should be re-worded.

[OSUKid7]

Being a big anti-piracy advocate, I don't have a lot of music. I listen to analog and Internet radio a lot, and have a few hundred megabytes of songs.

[jake080]

ive got 25 gigs (24.7 rather ;) ) i thought it was more like 27 now, but yeah, most of it IS MINE... there are like 300+ cds total, and only like 15 are pirated, and at that are old and that was before i heard the RIAA's threat to kill everyone ;)
but yeah, i wasnt paranoid, so its still taking up space, im not worried as i have 730gb here at the house 8O
hehehe
~Jake

[edited] i rip and encode in mp3 using EAC and LAME, set to maximum 320(or maybe 360) kbps VBR. Its the highest quality basically, and usually the VBR average is about 196kbps, rarely lower than 128, and often as high as 320kbps [end]

[JTWise]

Well - I chose the 2GB to 10GB selection, but I am at the upper end of this (9.8GB), mainly encoded WMA 160bps. Roughly about 2,200 songs.

[tzirbel]

Most of my cd rips are at 160 wma. (For some reason I like the sound quality at that setting.) I must admit to a hundred or so mp3s I downloaded. (would never buy those songs anyway. I know, I know still doesn't make it right but oh well) I have about 18gig worth. Still havn't ripped all my cd's yet. Been collecting them since 1986 and lately, been having a hard time finding the exact one I want to listen too. Having them organized on my computer or on my zen makes it a lot easier.

[Pony99CA]

The question was how much music you have ACCESS to. Technically, if you have an internet connection, you have access to virtually unlimited amount of music. I know I'm being pessimistic, but that is just how I am!
I thought of that, too, but figured I had nitpicked the poll enough. :lol:

Of course, you don't even need an Internet connection -- just friends who do or who rip their CDs for you.

Steve

[jlp]

I chose 50+. Now I have approximately 20 GB on my HDDs plus I have many CDs not yet ripped. I started buying CDs around 20 years ago 8)

So my estimation of the total amount of digital songs I have is around 50 GB so I chose more to have a good margin.

[acronym]

Being a big anti-piracy advocate, I don't have a lot of music. I listen to analog and Internet radio a lot, and have a few hundred megabytes of songs.

ahhh.. so if you have a lot of music on your computer you obviously have stolen it.

excellent work! :roll:

[dean_shan]

I have around 17GB. I now rip in 160VBR MP3 but before I ripped in 128Kbs MP3. My music is a mix of downloads, rips of mine and friends CDs, MP3s from friends, and iTunes store. I love music and have a wide varity of styles and genres.

[jgrnt1]

I have 3375 songs @ 160kbps mp3 -- about 15.5GB on the media pc in the entertainment center. I also copied them to a 20GB portable drive (Archos MiniHD). I played them in my car through my Toshiba e550g with the usb host cable. However, I now own an iPAQ 2215 and cannot currently use the drive with it. I am waiting for the ASUS wifi drive to come out. I plan to install it in my car and play music through my iPAQ.

I am considering re-ripping all my CD's to a lossless format, which would mean a much larger hard drive in my media PC, which is now affordable since HD prices keep dropping. The real issue is ripping all the CD's again. I plan on keeping the mp3's to use when I travel.

[jake080]

ahhh.. so if you have a lot of music on your computer you obviously have stolen it.
excellent work! :roll:

thanks for pointing that out as i said: "most of it IS MINE... there are like 300+ cds total, and only like 15 are pirated, and at that are old and that was before i heard the RIAA's threat to kill everyone"
:D
im a good boy ;)
~Jake

[arnage2]

i have 7gb of music, and over 5gb of videos.

[that_kid]

I have over 60 gigs of music and still going. I'm about to order 30 cd's from BMG cause now I find myself to have "not enough" music 8O.

[ctmagnus]

I have ~ 5GB. I tend to be extremely picky about what I listen to. Most of it (90%ish) is mine and the rest is from Napster's heyday.

[Swordsman74]

I have quite a few albums ripped to APE (lossless) format, and many more that are 320kbps MP3's, so right now I have over 100gig combined... For playing through my PPC, though, that is way too high. I would rip it again down to 128kpbs so that would likely bring my total down to 50-60gig range or lower... For portable purposes, I wouldn't necessarily want my entire collection anyway, so I think a 20gig HD in a PPC would be my sweet spot.... Believe me, though, I wouldn't turn down a good deal on one or more of those 4gig'ers!!!

[Zack Mahdavi]

I have about 8.5 GB of music encoded anywhere between 160 - 192 kbps for the mp3s and 128kbps for the AACs. About 90% of my collection is legal.

I'm facing one big problem. I have a second generation (large scroll wheel, buttons wrapped around wheel) 10GB iPod... so I'm about to run out of space! Oh well... I think I can wait a year or two for a better mp3 player to come out.

[paschott]

Well, mine is 20-30 GB total, CD Rips & OTR-type recordings made from "live" internet broadcasts/archives. Some were ripped a little too high, especially for radio-drama type stuff, but I haven't modified it yet. As for what I take on the road, I typically use an MP3 CD Player - easy to reformat and 700 MB right away. Besides, some of the newest ones (iRiver, I believe) support MP3, WMA, and OGG with the latest beta firmware. That's pretty cool!

Of course, I saw a deal on a CF card the other day for 1GB for ~ $50 after rebates. That wasn't too bad, but still hard to justify needing that much storage right now for my PPC. :-)

-Pete

[Pony99CA]

Of course, I saw a deal on a CF card the other day for 1GB for ~ $50 after rebates. That wasn't too bad, but still hard to justify needing that much storage right now for my PPC. :-)
Where did you see a 1 GB CF card for $50? The lowest I've found was about $130-$140 after rebates. Saying $50 "wasn't too bad" seems like a major understatement.

As for needing that much space, I have no problem justifying it. I already have a 512 MB SD card and a 512 MB CF card for my iPAQ 5550. Then again, maybe I'm just an information packrat. :lol:

Steve

[mcsouth]

Okay, so I'm obviously in the minority - I have 625 songs, which amounts to about 870MB in all. Having said that, I have been slow in ripping my CD collection, and probably only have about half ripped at this time. Most of what I haven't done yet are older CD's that I hardly listen to anymore, but ir I get the urge to listen to one, I typically rip it at that time.

Until I figure out a better way to manage all of my songs, I have been ripping at 64 kbps in *.wma format, since the music quality is acceptable for listening on my pda (iPaq 1945). I chose 64 kbps mainly for the smaller file size, so that I can cram as many songs onto a 512MB SD card as possible (still can't get enough on it, though....). What I feel I should do is also rip to a much higher quality setting as well for the day that I build my media server, but I haven't gotten around to setting up for trying to manage two sets of identical media files. I have been toying with the idea of getting an iPod or similar, just so that I could rip at the higher quality setting without worrying about the file sizes, but just don't want the hassle of carrying an extra device, so........

Out of curiousity, how many folks here use their PPC as a media player instead of a dedicated device, and does anyone share my dilemma of file sizes v. quality?

[tanalasta]

I have an antique computer with a small HDD (upgrade next week! yay:)) but if I was to have an mp3 player, I would endeavour to convert all my albums/cd's and store everything on the player. Thus anything around 1-10 GB's will probably be not enough.

Given at the moment, I backup all my fave cd's into mp3 format encoded at 196 (minimum that I'm happy with), it equates to between 60-100MB's an album. I would say, to be generous, a 20GB storage device would be fine for my requirements. This would equate to about 200 albums.

I would buy a 30GB iPOD quite happily if I had the moolah but I have no reason to buy a 50GB top-of-the-line device.

[Pony99CA]

Out of curiousity, how many folks here use their PPC as a media player instead of a dedicated device, and does anyone share my dilemma of file sizes v. quality?
I use my Pocket PC as my media player. I bought an RCA Lyra, too, but that was for my wife and daughter.

As for size vs. quality, I think we all share that dilemma. The only people who wouldn't either don't much care about digital music or have unlimited storage on any device they listen on. I rip 128 kbps MP3s because that's supposed to be near-CD quality and MP3 is pretty much universally playable.

Steve

[szamot]

140 GiGs and counting!

[Len M.]

We have 60 GB+ of music and it's all music that we've recorded live during the performance. None of it is mp3 -- it's all WAV files, fron 16/44.1 (CD quality) all the way up to 24/96 (DVD quality).


Len Moskowitz
Core Sound
www.core-sound.com

[Janak Parekh]

Some folks said that people with more than 30Gb of music formed less than 1% of computer users. Now, rather than guessing about what the statistics are, I'd like to ask you guys about your music listening habits.
Despite Thoughts Media's great popularity, I still assert that this poll won't be representative of most computer users' listening habits. ;)

As for me, I have about 20GB of music now on my 30GB iPod. And, for me, the Mini would never be sufficient. But I know quite a few others who have on the order of 1GB...

--janak

[hollis_f]

I must admit to being somewhat amazed. Anytime some noobie comes in here and discusses software piracy (or, even worse, asking how to pirate a bit of software) they're, quite rightly, stamped on from a great height. But nobody's commenting about the rife piracy of music that's being admitted to, left, right and centre, in this thread.

I have 2GB of music files - and every bit of it has been ripped from CDs that I've paid for.

[Janak Parekh]

But nobody's commenting about the rife piracy of music that's being admitted to, left, right and centre, in this thread.
Actually, I wouldn't say it's rampant in this thread -- most people sound like they've either never done it or have given it up.

I have 2GB of music files - and every bit of it has been ripped from CDs that I've paid for.
All of my 20GB are from my CDs and online music store purchases, completely legit. :)

--janak

[bjornkeizers]

In total, around 6 gb of pure sound, and about 10 gb of video - that's why I'm going to buy one of those cool multimedia players soon! And yes, I'm the kind of person with a parrot, wooden leg and an eyepatch. Yarr!

[marlof]

I have over 20 GB, from my own CD collection. As I write this, I'm ripping my LP collection to go to my iPod as well. More work (real time sucks for ripping!), but it gives me a chance to actually listen to my high school taste (after that, I went the CD route) again. I am having tons of fun. Going from old school Genesis through Joy Division to Rush in one swift move. :)

[Kacey Green]

But nobody's commenting about the rife piracy of music that's being admitted to, left, right and centre, in this thread.
Actually, I wouldn't say it's rampant in this thread -- most people sound like they've either never done it or have given it up.

I have 2GB of music files - and every bit of it has been ripped from CDs that I've paid for.
All of my 20GB are from my CDs and online music store purchases, completely legit. :)

--janak

Yeah!, we're all (almost all) former addicts! get off our collective case dude! In my case I went cold turkey on my last re-install of xp before the RIAA trials made the news ~ 1-3 months before

[Pony99CA]

But nobody's commenting about the rife piracy of music that's being admitted to, left, right and centre, in this thread.
Actually, I wouldn't say it's rampant in this thread -- most people sound like they've either never done it or have given it up.

There have been a few. One guy stated he got music from downloads (and, yes, I know some downloads are legal) and friends. Another said 90% of his 8 GB collection was legal -- implying 800 MB was illegal.

I know that I wouldn't admit to any piracy in a public forum....

All of my 20GB are from my CDs and online music store purchases, completely legit. :)

But what about the guy with 140 GB? 8O

(In the above, the names were omitted to protect the suspicious. :-D)

Steve

[Steve Jordan]

You should have put in a poll category for less than 1GB, just to see what kind of numbers you'd get there. I have an RCA Lyra that I use to listen to music to and from work, and I listen to internet radio at work and home. But because I want to record my own stuff, and I have a ton of albums that take time to record (we won't talk about the logistics of my stereo being in one room, and my PC being in another), I have WAY less than a gig of music.

I don't download music... I find so little I want. Being an old-school jazz fan (hmm... no emoticons with berets?), I find there's not much of worth out there to download, and what is out there is too hard to find. As long as downloading sources are pop-dominated, I can't use 'em.

[that_kid]

All 60+ gigs of music is from cd's and recrds that I own. Years ago I tried file swapping but all I kept finding was low quality junk, so I stopped searching for music online.

[jake080]

Actually, I wouldn't say it's rampant in this thread -- most people sound like they've either never done it or have given it up.


yeah, given it up long ago after like 10 or so cds :lol:

[jake080]

Years ago I tried file swapping but all I kept finding was low quality junk, so I stopped searching for music online.

yeah, before i knew of its illegalities, that was my reason of having downloaded so few a cd... I felt extremely geeky in those places seeing that my personal rips were easily like 5+ times better! :P
'twas annoying, then i learned the truth :( lol, i no likey it, but im glad i know!

[jlp]

Steve J,

"Up to 1 GB" already means less than 1 GB :twisted:

Have you tried MP3.com? they should have all sorts of music

[welmoed]

We used to have a huge 300-CD carousel in the living room that was full, with about 100 more in a box for single play. I hated it. So last year for Christmas we bought an Audiotron. Wow, we love it. It took forever to rip all the CDs to a 120-gig hard drive on a dedicated music server, but it was so worth the effort. Now we can listen to anything we want (including internet radio, which is great) and are getting set to add three more receivers to other areas of the house. I also use my iPaq to listen to music in the car and when I'm exercising; I will copy an album or two onto CF or SD cards. I think the only place I still use CDs is in the car.

--Welmoed

[mcsouth]

I think the only place I still use CDs is in the car.

....sounds like it's time to move up to a Wi-Fi car stereo - you know, the one that will sync with your network when your car is in the driveway? I've heard these were coming, although I'm not sure if they are actually out yet.....

[Janak Parekh]

There have been a few.
Yes, but that doesn't translate to "rife", "left, right & center". ;)

But what about the guy with 140 GB? 8O
Entirely possible to be legit, although, he/she's probably well-off if that's the case. ;)

As for me, I never used Napster, Kazaa, or any other P2P service to illegally obtain music. In fact, I've never, ever installed any of them on any of my machines in the first place.

--janak

[szamot]

I must admit to being somewhat amazed. Anytime some noobie comes in here and discusses software piracy (or, even worse, asking how to pirate a bit of software) they're, quite rightly, stamped on from a great height. But nobody's commenting about the rife piracy of music that's being admitted to, left, right and centre, in this thread.

I have 2GB of music files - and every bit of it has been ripped from CDs that I've paid for.


That's assuming that everyone that comes here lives in US where copying music is illegal. Personally I have over 1000 CD's all bought at some $10 - $250/cd for limited imported promo materials. I figured that since RIAA pays an artist about a buck per CD, they owe me some 100,000 - and so I am working on it building my collection as I go by. Being in Canada of course it is all legal and the source of my music is what I exchange with my friends never of Kazaa or whatever else is the flavor of the day for P2P's. There are people I know that are exciding 1.3TB of music - living in Canada I guess does have it's own advantages, not only do we not have to deal with RIAA but also "Homeland Security Office"

[Steve Jordan]

Suure, it's easy to burn CDs, isn't it? My big is burning albums to digital files.

I have a CD burner that plugs into my stereo, where my phono is also plugged in. (Try to find a reasonably-priced stereo with phono input these days.) Setting up a single album, then burning each individual track, is what is usually the big pain: Setting levels (different for each album), recording each song individually, resetting the burner between each track... a single album usually takes me a solid hour of being locked in front of the unit. And then taking the CDs upstairs to the computer, to burn MP3s... sheesh! At that rate, I'll have them all burned by just before the next little ice age (or the coming of Waterworld, whichever hits first).

I need a better system, before I can even think about converting my 2-300 classic jazz albums to digital.

[Jonathon Watkins]

Finally, storage is dependent on the format and quality of the files. The article talked about how many songs people wanted, not how much storage was required, so this poll probably should have to.

Well, you don't buy units by how many albums they hold, you buy them by storage capacity. One man rips at 64Kb WMA, another at 320Kb MP3. Talking about the number of song a device holds is meaningless in this context. A separate poll about the number of tracks is valid, but I'm not interested in that per-se. :wink:

By 'access', I was meaning the usual way of talking about that word, i.e. what you regularly use/listen to/have locally.

Either way, question should be re-worded.

Can't, sorry. Once a poll is in progress, that's it. If you edit it, you trash the poll. It's a known bug. :?

[Jonathon Watkins]

Some folks said that people with more than 30Gb of music formed less than 1% of computer users. Now, rather than guessing about what the statistics are, I'd like to ask you guys about your music listening habits.
Despite Thoughts Media's great popularity, I still assert that this poll won't be representative of most computer users' listening habits. ;)

Give it time........ :wink:

I'm more interested in the folks *here*, who may well be power users etc, but are still a valid slice of the computing community.

As for me, I never used Napster, Kazaa, or any other P2P service to illegally obtain music. In fact, I've never, ever installed any of them on any of my machines in the first place.

I did install Napster in it's hayday, but I used it to obtain single tracks off albums, which are scratched on my CD copy. I still have half a dozen tracks which jump or won't rip correctly. :? If I own the CD, which is damaged, I don't see a problems in obtaining a perfect copy of the track elsewhere. However, I won't install one of the newer file sharing programs. I don't want the risk of malware, the hassle etc.

[Jonathon Watkins]

But nobody's commenting about the rife piracy of music that's being admitted to, left, right and centre, in this thread.
Actually, I wouldn't say it's rampant in this thread -- most people sound like they've either never done it or have given it up.

I have 2GB of music files - and every bit of it has been ripped from CDs that I've paid for.
All of my 20GB are from my CDs and online music store purchases, completely legit. :)

Same here. I personally don't condone piracy. I own 35 odd Gb of music, and have a further 3Gb in a folder marked 'On_Trial'. These are albums I borrowed off friends, ripped & handed back - just like borrowing the album off them for a few weeks. I listen to the albums in the 'On_Trial' folder, & if I like them, I buy them at a later date. If I don't like them, I delete them. Just today I borrowed 'Röyksopp - Melody A.M' off a friend. I would never have bought it just from liking the main track,'Eple', but having listed to the album three or four times now, I will be buying it in the future. I can give you a long list of albums I never would have bought if I hadn't had the chance to repeatedly listen to them beforehand. I can also give you a list of albums that I ripped, listened to and then delted. It cuts both ways.

[welmoed]

I think the only place I still use CDs is in the car.

....sounds like it's time to move up to a Wi-Fi car stereo - you know, the one that will sync with your network when your car is in the driveway? I've heard these were coming, although I'm not sure if they are actually out yet.....

Boy, I wish I had the discretionary income to buy a new car because the radio is obsolete! :wink:

I have one of those devices that feeds the signal from the PDA to an unused FM channel. It works pretty well, but it eats AAA batteries. However, if I'm on a long car trip I like to listed to audio books, so I will load up files on the PDA and use the sound feeder to go through the stereo.

--Welmoed

[Kacey Green]

Has anyone used iSelect? http://www.iselect.com/default.htm i have and I love it anyone with a decent sized media library should try it.

[marlof]

I need a better system, before I can even think about converting my 2-300 classic jazz albums to digital.

I just hooked up stereo to my computer. I record in .wav, and convert that to a more manageable format (MP3 in my case). In my experience so far (it was a lot of trial and error before I got decent results), the input level is pretty constant and I can record one album side before I need to look at it again. The tool I'm using is Nero's SoundTrax, that came with Nero 6. It has some clicks-and-noise filter settings, but I sparsely use that, and only for the large clicks. Then again, back in the old days I didn't like Dolby when I taped my records as well. Guess I prefer full dynamics over lack of smaller clicks and hissing.

[Kati Compton]

Out of curiousity, how many folks here use their PPC as a media player instead of a dedicated device, and does anyone share my dilemma of file sizes v. quality?
I have high-quality (160) rips for use on my laptop (which I play off of at home and work), and lower-quality (112) for my PPC.

[Flynn Arrowstarr]

I have between 20 and 30 gigs worth of music, all legal. Most of that is from my CD collection, about half a gig comes from iTunes.

I mostly encode at 96 kbps because at the time I first started doing this I only had the free version of RealPlayer 8 (which limits you to 96 kbps on MP3 format). Now, I use 128 kbps. I would encode higher than that, but I haven't been able to justify the drive storage space (yet ;)).

Flynn

[louiewu]

I presently have 6310 songs encoded at 192kbs and have capacity for about another 6000 or so on the 80 gig drive.

I have an Ipaq with a 5gig drive in it so I could store almost 1600 songs on that so...

By the way...every single one is backed up by an original recording on either vinyl or cd...

That collection weighs over 300 pounds and the hard drive could hold 2 copies of the whole thing....

:mrgreen:

[minimage]

I think I have less than a gig. I convert mine to a lower quality, as my PPC has only a 256mb SD card and a 64mb CF, and they are nearly filled with ebooks and programs. Sounds good enough on my car radio, thanks to my iRock. I tried ripping, once, and failed, so my cds stay in their shrink wrap.

A little late, I know; I've been away in Tablet-land.