Digital Jukeboxes – 1000 Song is Ideal?

[Jonathon Watkins]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3652487.stm' target='_blank'>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3652487.stm</a><br /><br /></div>The BBC is carrying a story about consumer preferences for digital media players. "The perfect size for a portable music player is one that can hold 1,000 songs, a study suggests. A survey carried out by Jupiter Research has found that almost all the consumers questioned were storing no more than 1,000 songs on their home PC. Jupiter said digital music players with capacities of 5,000 songs will provide too much space for most people." <br /><br />Too much space???? :duh: Pardon? Is there such a thing? 1000 songs equates to around 4Gb. The same size in fact as the new generation of Microdrives and Compact Flash cards. Funny that. :wink: <br /><br /> <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/4gbmicro.jpg" /><br /><i><span>Large enough for you? </span></i><br /><br />"Consumers were also wary of gadgets that gave them too much storage space, such as those made by Creative, Archos and Dell. But the report said that almost half of those thinking about buying a portable player, 45%, would like one that could play video. The report speculated that this could lead a push to players with bigger hard drives on board. Other features that matter to consumers are rechargeable batteries (55%), small size (52%) and the ability to connect it up to a PC (49%). Few of those questioned had a preference for the format of the music being stored."<br /><br />There they go again – too much space! I own 30Gb of music (in MP3 format ripped at 192kbs). How am I meant to fit that on one of these' perfectly' sized players? However give me a 4Gb Microdrive for my Pocket PC, or better yet, a Pocket PC with a built in hard drive, and I'll reconsider. All my media needs in one device? Ta very much. :mrgreen: How about you guys? What size is 'ideal' for you and in what circumstances?

[Tom W.M.]

4GB is ideal? Give me a break. If I get a hard drive MP3 player, I want to put all of my music on it—and preferably keep it only there. That way I could save a whole lot of HD space on my PC, and have all of my music consolidated into one device (No more confusing differences between collections—yay!). The price difference between 4GB and much larger size players isn't enough—if I thought that any of these devices were worth the money (for me) at these prices, I'd get the bigger one.

[jonathanchoo]

I have to agree that 4Gb is too much just for music unless people start ripping their music up to 256kbps bitrate.

But I don't care about music much, I have 250 minidiscs to play on my Sony MZ-E900 with a 40 hour battery life.

What I care is video. That is why I am keenly awaiting Archos' latest AV500 series with its 480x704 high resolution screen and build in 40Gb HDD running LinuxOS.

[droppedd]

and like of course has to be said to any post like this.

"640Kb of RAM should be enough for anyone."
-bill gates 1981

in all honesty, i have a 1.5 gig mp3 player and it's fine for my needs, even though i encode at fairly high quality (~206 kbps average VBR mp3s). It may be a little short for, say, a weeklong business trip, but for that a 4 gig player would still be plenty.

The only reason i'd ever need a bigger HDD player is if i'm keeping movies on it or using it as a digital camera photo wallet (like the archos with the CF drive). I mean, i have 42 gigs of mp3s. while having the choice to play all of them whenever i wanted would be nice... just having a selection of a few dozen is plenty, thank you very much. i'd rather save on the size and cost of the player. and synching the player every week or two to choose music isn't that big of a deal.

oh and this should show how wonderfully developed the tastes of the mp3 player market is (not to mention the brilliant survey design):

"and the ability to connect it up to a PC (49%)"
huh? how are the other 51% planning to get mp3s onto their jukebox? :)

[DrtyBlvd]

63.8G here; and most of that at 128 to be honest (For the moment, anyways)

I have a 20G iPod, and wish I had the 40. :roll:

[that_kid]

65 gigs here but I rip @ 256k but I still have thousand of records and a few hundred more cd's to rip. I have a 40 gig ipod and I wish it were 120 gigs.

[jonathanchoo]

i'd rather save on the size and cost of the player. and synching the player every week or two to choose music isn't that big of a deal.

"and the ability to connect it up to a PC (49%)"
huh? how are the other 51% planning to get mp3s onto their jukebox? :)

I want a mp3 player as light as my minidisc player at 60g with a battery that last 40 hours.

There are a few mp3 players on the market that can record mp3s from a CD player source (probably analog signal) or through its built-in FM/DAB radio. What we need are digital line-ins for recording from CD decks digitally.

[Pat Logsdon]

and like of course has to be said to any post like this.

"640Kb of RAM should be enough for anyone."
-bill gates 1981
Not actually true. (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/gatesivu.htm) :wink:

I rotate ~40 songs to my 256mb SD card about once a week, and it's starting to become tedious. For the amount of stuff I have, I think a 15GB iPod would be just about right. I'm afraid I'd fill up 4GB too quickly. Now I just need to actually GET that iPod... :mrgreen:

[GoldKey]

I want to be able to carry everything. Also, I expect my MP3 player to far outlast my PDA. So really 120 GB seems like it would cover what I have and leave room to grow. If we add video to the mix, again, I want everything, 1 TB does not seem out of the realm of possibility.

[oom]

why does everyone on these boards think they are a "normal" person. :wink:
I think there is validity to these claims.
I am in the process of buying a player. I allready have a cellphone, digital camera, PDA, and soon a player.
How much more crap do I need to carry around?
Also, though I would love to carry around my whole collection, when was the last time I listened to Thomas Dolby.
I really only listen to 3-4 albums at any one time for weeks on end.
I bet most "real" humans have not even ripped a CD, so when asked if carying 1000 songs is enough, their answer is yes.
Most of my friends with I-pods or clones never really listen to all thier content anyway.
Remember we here are freaks, not normal, to be shuned and have fingers pointed at us. :D


craig

[Kati Compton]

Also, though I would love to carry around my whole collection, when was the last time I listened to Thomas Dolby.
In my case, a couple days ago... ;)

On my recent trip I used my PPC with a radio transmitter to provide tunes for car rides. I have a 512MB CF and a 256MB SD card in my Axim. I had 3 directories of music. One for just me for on the plane and airport&lt;->hotel driving, one for listening with my former boss and co-workers, and one for classic rock, leaning towards prog rock (Hendrix, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, etc).

I put on the classic rock for a drive with some colleagues that were of the classic rock era. That was a big hit.

If the trip were any longer, though (it was 4 days) or there was a lot more driving, I would have wanted more space.

Of course, I had most things encoded OGG at 160. So I probably could scale that back a few notches and fit more stuff.

[oom]

I have a 512MB CF and a 256MB SD card in my Axim

My setup is exactly the same.
Although I love "Golden age of Wireless" (how prophetic)
I rarely listen to my whole collection at any given time. (Cocteau Twins, Gary Numan etc.).
1 - 4 gigs is more than enough for me to swap out my new tastes for old every couple of weeks.
Example; My fiance only listens to her new favorite albums (Dido or Norah Jones) and I imagine many people are very similar.
15 gigs is way too much space for her and the many like her.
Doesn't mean their bad, just strange. :D

craig

p.s. I secretly crave a huge disk player, but being honest with myself, it is just not how I listen to music.

[Kevin C. Tofel]

Jupiter said digital music players with capacities of 5,000 songs will provide too much space for most people."

I'm sorry.....I only have a 64Mg MuVo and haven't really investigated the HDD type devices, but: don't these devices also allow for portable data file storage? I carry my MuVo not just for music, but for grabbing data and carrying it around for later use on another machine.

If I was just going to store music, then yes, I probably wouldn't have more than a 1,000 songs (but that's me). However, I would still want to have as much storage as possible for pictures, books, data files, etc....

My point: you can never have too much storage capability....only too little.

KCT

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

Well, for anyone who's curious, I just bought the 4GB Microdrive OEM off of eBay (I'm pretty sure it was removed from a Muvo2).

The device has been fantastic in my hp2215. No battery drainage while my device is idle (tested over 5 hours of idle time) and playing an 1.5hr DivX movie on PMVP (w/ caching activated to max 12MB), the battery only went down to 46%.

I previously was employing a 512MB SD combined with a 512MB CF and was itching for more room for my videos and music. This Microdrive should hold me over for a little while longer.

[andbrown]

Interesting comments! Sounds like some of you might be well served by Microsoft's Portable Media Center platform when it debuts later this year. :wink:

[Zack Mahdavi]

why does everyone on these boards think they are a "normal" person. :wink:

I completely agree with you. We're all the weirdos of the consumer electronics world. We can't stop wanting space.

Personally, my collection is around 7.3GB at 128kbps. So my trusty 2 year old iPod is a perfect fit. :) I'm waiting for the day that the iPod minis get more space before I upgrade.

[bjornkeizers]

why does everyone on these boards think they are a "normal" person. :wink:


We are, in our peergroup. I'd like to think we're a few levels above your average normal human - the ones out there still without PPC's and MP3 players and WiFi networks (in other words, those still living in the dark ages :D)

I have a 10 gigabyte Archos Jukebox Recorder. I've got hundreds on there, even audio books, but still I've only used up... oh 3 gigs thereabouts. I took it with me on holiday to the Czech Republic last year - it's close to an 8 hour drive, and we spent two weeks there. I never heard the same song twice unless I wanted to.

When I buy a new device, it's going to be one of those all in one players, that plays movies and can show pictures too. I'm taking a long hard look at the archos 320 and that Iriver pimp thing. You can never have too much space. Physically iimpossible.

[jlp]

Indeed, not only do we need space for songs, multi megapix images and video, some also need to carry other large files as well; like PPT presentations, databases, etc.

Remember these devices are advertized as portable HDD as well, not only MP3 or multimedia players.

So the more the better, and that's well above a few gigabytes.

[gorkon280]

Someone made a good point on here. We are well above your average consumer. My dad bought a new stereo for his van and it can play MP3's burnt on to a cd. I tried to talk him through installing my favorite ripper on the pc, CDex. He had all kinds of issued with the ASPI drivers. He finally got it installed, and I bet he has not ripped a cd yet. Other programs like iTunes go to far for people like him as well. They need to learn how to organize files first, then they can use programs like iTunes to help.

[Buddha]

I think it is a real good point to point out that we are not the average consumer. Yeah we need space and I agree that WE can never have too much space but WE are not the average Joe from down the street.
Yes it is nice too be able to store your fotos, powerpoints, excels, videofiles etc etc but wake up, 'normal' people don't do this... (yet). A lot of people are still at the stage where they are happy if they can turn on and use a computer and figure out how to put some songs on their portable mp3 player! :wink: Let's face it most people see an ipod like a walkman and they want to listen to their latest Britney Spears, Eminem, Dido and Blink182 Albums and that's it! They are not going to rip their entire cd collection for days on end just to put them in the ipod. Also the average Joe doesn't go on business trips for several days on a regular basis.

Now I'm not saying that it isn't nice to have a 100.000 songs to choose from and not hear the same song twice during a trip or something but for a normal person it isn't an unbearable situation: Turn on the radio (not a good idea :mrgreen:) I bet you'll hear the same songs more than twice! :D Joe from the block just wants things to work an be happy, he doesn't want to do special re-encoding for videofiles and stuff like that. Joe just wants to drag and drop and listen and when he's tired of it he'll just toss it and get some new stuff. (you wouldn't want to listen to 'old'/passé music would you :roll:)

WE need the space because we know our stuff or like to experiment and learn... they don't, 4GB right now is more than enough for THEM.

[Altaman]

I guess the question is "What is normal"? I classify myself as normal (although my wife would argue this in numerous areas).

I would look at a person who has a PDA, cell phone and standalone GPS as normal. I would not expect this person to have an MP3 player as I think that this feature is widely promoted when you go to buy A PDA.

I personally have a Toshiba E800, cell phone, Pharos GPS (mouse type to my E800) and a 4 Gig Microdrive. I use my PDA for MP3's, navigation and personal/work use. To me and you this is probably normal, to the guy that I used in the example above, I think he would probably think it normal as well but maybe not. The difference between him and me is that I looked around for the technology that would allow me to make more use of my PDA.

The other question is integration, how much do you want to keep in one unit? Me, I personally wouldn't want a cellphone in my PDA, but having an MP3 player and GPS capability I look at as fully logical.

I guess what I am saying is where do you classify someone as normal? The person who has all these items seperately or the person who integrates them all into one or two devices?

Alt

[WindWalker]

As much as I dislike the degeneration of the discussion into Us versus Them, it is true: the needs desires and of the tech savvy will always outstrip the needs and desires of the general public..

Ooo. Can I get a Law named after me now? Moore's Law......WindWalker's Law? 0X

[WindWalker]

I guess the question is "What is normal"? I classify myself as normal (although my wife would argue this in numerous areas).


I understand that. I am an opera singing computer analyst with a bent towards comic books. Normal how?

I think, as I stated in my previous post, that it is not a question of who's normal, just who is more technically savvy. As the things we enjoy and demand move into the mainstream, our needs and desires change, as we prefer bigger, better, faster, more (please note: I am not deliberately quoting 4 Non Blondes).

When it comes to music, all one needs to do is look at the programming patterns of the Top 40/Pop style stations. Note that their playlists are so short as to be....well, painful. now, translate that into the masses, who are willing to accept a short playlist. Even those that claim "a greater variety" only need to have a playlist of 40-80 different songs to demonstrate variety, at least to the average listener. "Variety," for most radio listenters, is "I hear my favorite song at least once every few days," I think. If this is the case (and frankly, I have no data to back this up, but when has that stopped anyone from making a statement?), 4 GB is more than enough, at least until the general public decides that clones of Britany, Limp Bizkit, and the rest of it aren't good enough.

&lt;hopping off the soapbox>

[bjornkeizers]

I would look at a person who has a PDA, cell phone and standalone GPS as normal. I would not expect this person to have an MP3 player as I think that this feature is widely promoted when you go to buy A PDA.


True, but fact is, a dedicated MP3 player will always be better at it then your PPC. It has better battery life and more memory then your PPC - and it's far cheaper per mb. I have a PPC, but I also carry around the 10 gigabyte monster, because I get three days of music with one charge, and it's got every song I ever heard on it. My PPC can't do that.

[caywen]

Those of you with 30 gigs of music consist of like 1% of computer users. There are those of us who:

1. Don't collect that much music
2. Purchase our music instead of mass downloading and transferring gigs at a time
3. Are satisfied swapping music in/out of our limited-capacity players.

The reason I have not bought a 40GB player is that I realize I'm paying hundreds of space I really don't want. Since when do people want to pay for things they don't want? Selling a 40GB jukebox is like trying to sell joe schmoe a mac truck.

4GB is perfect from a market perspective. It's big enough to hold the entire music collection for many people. And after you filter out all the songs that you really don't want to listen to, it's big enough to hold enough such that you'd never have to swap music.

And it's small enough not to cost $350.

[Jonathon Watkins]

Those of you with 30 gigs of music consist of like 1% of computer users.

It certainly would be interesting to see the actual statistic. Most folks I know, are getting 15Gb or much larger players, so I think that the number of folk looking for 30Gb or larger, form more than 1% of the demand. I feel a poll coming along at some point........

I haven't even talked about using these for computer backups or storing digital photos etc.

There are those of us who:

1. Don't collect that much music
2. Purchase our music instead of mass downloading and transferring gigs at a time
3. Are satisfied swapping music in/out of our limited-capacity players.

1.) Fair enough - many folk I know have much larger collections than I do.
2). Personally I own all my music on CD - apart from a few CDs I borrowed from friends and ripped to try out. If I like them, I buy them, if not, they get deleted.
3. Life's too short to keep swapping music around. :wink:

4GB is perfect from a market perspective. It's big enough to hold the entire music collection for many people. And after you filter out all the songs that you really don't want to listen to, it's big enough to hold enough such that you'd never have to swap music.

And it's small enough not to cost $350.

Personally I listed to albums - even if there are one or two duff tracks, in general I will listen to the whole thing - no filtering.

The cost is a valid point however - but for not much more than the cost of the 4Gb devices you can get a 15Gb etc device that holds whole lot more songs.

[dantanzer]

Currently I listen to about 10-20 artists at any one given time on my pocket pc and with good compression i can fit then on my 512mb card (total collection around 40 gigs at either 128 or 192mp3).

Space isn't everything and i set out to prove it with a piece of software i published about a month ago called Zerama ToGo. I was planning on picking up a 4gig but the convenience of Zerama ToGo has made that sorta unnecessary. After reading this thread I thought you guys my find some interest in my music syncing utility, if so, take a look @ www.zerama.net.

[tzirbel]

OK, I’ll bite on this one. I’ve been collecting CDs since 1986. Between mine and my wife’s CDs we share about 460. Which isn’t much. About 25 a year. I have ripped them all to the pc to listen to while I work and so on. Bought a 256 mg player and like it a lot Load music on it for a work out and it rocks. When I travel though it becomes a different story. I can anticipate what I might want to listen too a day or two down the road but it never works out that way. I so damn fickle that I never have what I want when I want it. So I bought a Nomad Zen Xtra. 30Gb. All of my cds fit with a little room left over for growth. Now if I want to listen to a song and it’s not on me. I don’t own it period.
I tried keeping music on my Ipaq but you know, with the jukebox I only have to transfer the music once. Time isn’t spent anticipating future listening wants. It’s all there all the time. My ipaq battery can be spent on more useful tasks. If my jukebox breaks I will not be nearly as upset or setback as if my Ipaq would break.

[Janak Parekh]

It certainly would be interesting to see the actual statistic. Most folks I know, are getting 15Gb or much larger players, so I think that the number of folk looking for 30Gb or larger, form more than 1% of the demand.
But who do you associate with? ;)

My utterly approximate data suggests that some people do indeed own a lot of CDs, but most of them ignore the vast majority of them -- and there's a sizeable population that don't have that many. I find myself an exception, having 17GB of music perfectly ripped and organized in iTunes.

--janak

[Jonathon Watkins]

It certainly would be interesting to see the actual statistic. Most folks I know, are getting 15Gb or much larger players, so I think that the number of folk looking for 30Gb or larger, form more than 1% of the demand.
But who do you associate with? ;)

Fair point. To clarify, the folks that I know *that are buying digital players* are getting large ones. OK? :)

[Janak Parekh]

Fair point. To clarify, the folks that I know *that are buying digital players* are getting large ones. OK? :)
1. If you'd have to estimate, what % of them are technically-savvy?

2. If the iPod Mini were available in the UK now, could that demographic change? ;)

--janak

[Jonathon Watkins]

Fair point. To clarify, the folks that I know *that are buying digital players* are getting large ones. OK? :)
1. If you'd have to estimate, what % of them are technically-savvy?

100%. :D Or 98.5% on a bad day. However, I'm not sure what the significance of that is. I know a few folks that aren't tech savvy and that have large CD collections. My guess would be that they would want all their music accessible to take with them, but what do I know? :wink:

[2. If the iPod Mini were available in the UK now, could that demographic change? ;)

Ah yes, the small, but significant small print to the question. Still I've been in discussions where folks were weighing up the small size & price, against the larger (in every way) devices. The iPod Minis seem severely overpriced, so moving from 4Gb storage to 15Gb is not that big a jump.

But still, 100 albums storage on 4Gb - it's not that much really.....

[Janak Parekh]

100%. :D Or 98.5% on a bad day. However, I'm not sure what the significance of that is. I know a few folks that aren't tech savvy and that have large CD collections. My guess would be that they would want all their music accessible to take with them, but what do I know?
It would make for an interesting survey. I find that technically-savvy folks are the ones who believe in "there's no such thing as too much space" more than others.

[2. If the iPod Mini were available in the UK now, could that demographic change? ;)
Ah yes, the small, but significant small print to the question. Still I've been in discussions where folks were weighing up the small size & price, against the larger (in every way) devices. The iPod Minis seem severely overpriced, so moving from 4Gb storage to 15Gb is not that big a jump.
As the ridiculous sales figures show, the iPod Mini's value proposition is not really space, but rather size. The "additional $50 for 10GB" also means "additional $50 for a much larger device". Apart from those with limited listening habits, people with large collections are surprisingly willing to compromise at 4GB.

--janak

[Jonathon Watkins]

100%. :D Or 98.5% on a bad day. However, I'm not sure what the significance of that is. I know a few folks that aren't tech savvy and that have large CD collections. My guess would be that they would want all their music accessible to take with them, but what do I know?
It would make for an interesting survey. I find that technically-savvy folks are the ones who believe in "there's no such thing as too much space" more than others.

As I previously mentioned, I think that it will soon be time for my first front page survey. :wink:

Apart from those with limited listening habits, people with large collections are surprisingly willing to compromise at 4GB.

I believe I made a similar assertion at the end of the original post, no? :wink:

[ChristopherTD]

I guess one factor is how many CDs you own. I have been "collecting" them for years and have over 600. I haven't ripped many of them but still have almost 25GB of music/books which I shuffle on and off my 10GB iPod. I have my eyes on a 40GB iPod.

The benefits of having a large selection of music with you on one convenient device only become apparent when you actually have it. It doesn't seem like such a big deal until you start to use it. This accounts for the sudden enthusiasm of iPod (and other jukebox) users shortly after they get their device.

The curious thing is that Mp3 players are indelibly associated with downloaded music. In the 2 years that I have had my iPod nobody has ever said, "What do you use to rip your music", they always say "Where do you download your music from". The media has very effectively managed to convince the public that all people using digital music are thieves.

[hollis_f]

As the ridiculous sales figures show, the iPod Mini's value proposition is not really space, but rather size. --janak
For most of my colleagues size is also the main feature they're after. Many more are impressed with my 256MB Muvo than are impressed by my 20GB Gmini

[bjornkeizers]

I'd definitely like to see a comprehensive survey on this: not just 'do you own an MP3 player' but also size, demographic, use ripping vs downloading etc.

As for myself, I don't buy CD's. I'm honest about that. I get all my music from Kazaa. CD's are too expensive and I like mostly old and hard to find stuff. And since I'm going to rip them anyway, what would be the point in buying them? Coasters?

Here's how I see it: when you walk into a store and ask about the MP3 players, what would the store clerk say to you: 'Buy this and you can put your own music on here, but you have to rip everything by hand and still buy CD's' or 'With this, you can download everything off Kazaa for free and never have to buy a CD ever again' Well, I've been to many an electronic store, and witnessed many such conversations, and not once did I hear the word 'rip'

[Kacey Green]

"BJORNKEIZERS COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!, DROP THE MOUSE!"

[jlp]

ckacey, I can picture that :snipersmile:

:D :D

((where's the sniper smiley with the rifle gone??))

[Felix Torres]

The problem with this analysis is that it only looks backwards; to the past.
1000 songs is more than big-enough for your typical teenage user that is just stockpiling *known* material that he/she likes. It is, after all, about 80 CDs worth of music...

Somebody who has been listening to music for an extensive period of time, however, can easily build up collections of, again, "known good" material.

But what of new material?
Nature abhores an empty hard drive; so how are those massive drives going to get filled?

One possibility that will be offered to jukebox owners is to use the hd as a cache for "untested" music, via a music subscription service, where songs get "pushed", Avant-go-like, to your PC music cache for synch'ing to your player hd. The cache gets compiled and updated regularly via user preference profiles and preference tracking software in the jukebox itself.

Think of it as the "Survivor" model of music discovery; you set aside a portion of your hd to hold various batches of songs vying for your attention and the ones that don't make the cut get voted off your hd to make room for new ones. After a while, you end up with a mix of combining old-favorites and newer, "insteresting" stuff that you may or not want to buy but do want to listen to for a while. And if you tire of hearing Macarena after the fiftieth time (instead of the second) you don't kick yourself for wasting a buck.

And, naturally, you would have multiple caches defined by different profiles, depending on your mood; think of it as an XM radio competitor that caters to your tadtes, or a custom internet radio station that travels, instead of a music store, and you'll see that big hard drives *are* and will be better.

Of course, this requires a whole new breed of player software that is likely beyond the capabilities of the firmware embedded in most if not all currently shipping players.

Which is to say that, while Jupiter Research may be "literally" correct in their assessment of the typical online music store customer, circa 2003-2004, which *is* driven be the online teen crowd, volume-wise; any company betting the farm on that business model is at serious risk of becoming roadkill in 2005.

For me, that means my 20 Gb RIOT (75% full right now) will be obsolete in another year.
As expected.
No biggie.
Three years life will be enough.
Its successor?
Dunno, but I really like the size and form factor of the Creative (Nomad?) Portable Media Center.
I figure the 80Gb model will be a good deal when it hit $299 in summer 05. :-)
Gotta plan ahead in this racket...

[Mojo Jojo]

Here is my take... and maybe some will read it and some won't but I thought I would try anyways.

I myself have a limited amount of music I enjoy. Maybe about 1.2 gigs. I own an iPod mini.

My wife has about 37 some odd gigs. She owns a 15 gig iPod.

We are both happy, and neither of us will ever have to manually swap music back and forth in our daily lives. Even if I were to increase my collection I would not have to do anything manually to enjoy my music and still hear the whole collection.

How do you ask? Well Apple has created a nifty little feature for the iPod and iTunes that records which music you played, when it was last played, and how many times you played it. You can even rank the music to indicate which songs you like the best. Ever time you connect to charge the device it does a quick poll and does a number of things.

If your a random type of person and like everything equally it can removed 'played songs' and replace them with something you haven't heard. Thus rotating your songs to fit the player. Allowing for days of music on end with no repeats even though your player has less room then your total collection.

Or you could rank your songs and your favorites will be always kept while played and least favorite songs are replaced.

You can mix and match... your choice, but with a little set up you can have a large collection that exceedes your players capacity with little impact to you.

Unless your away from your computer for days on end, or you listen to music more then 8 hours a day and charge at a wall socket, these features make it viable.

For my wife, she can listen all day during her research (about 6 hours) go home and 'plop' (yes I use a very descriptive term to show how hard she has to work at connecting it to the dock and the always on iMac for charging) and she will never hear a repeat until she goes through her collection. As 6 hours is about 1 gig at 128bit encoding 3 minute songs average (lets say) even though she has 37 gigs of music a 4 gig player would absolutely work for her.

In the morning, freshly charged, new music and off she goes. Happy as can be.

So till players battery life exceeds storage amount there are painless and transparent ways to make small 4 gig players work. Or said another way until a battery can play 32 hours non stop to listen to just 4 gig I will never hear all my music before I need to charge anyways.

[Kacey Green]

The problem with this analysis is that it only looks backwards; to the past.
1000 songs is more than big-enough for your typical teenage user that is just stockpiling *known* material that he/she likes. It is, after all, about 80 CDs worth of music...

Somebody who has been listening to music for an extensive period of time, however, can easily build up collections of, again, "known good" material.

But what of new material?
Nature abhores an empty hard drive; so how are those massive drives going to get filled?

One possibility that will be offered to jukebox owners is to use the hd as a cache for "untested" music, via a music subscription service, where songs get "pushed", Avant-go-like, to your PC music cache for synch'ing to your player hd. The cache gets compiled and updated regularly via user preference profiles and preference tracking software in the jukebox itself.

Think of it as the "Survivor" model of music discovery; you set aside a portion of your hd to hold various batches of songs vying for your attention and the ones that don't make the cut get voted off your hd to make room for new ones. After a while, you end up with a mix of combining old-favorites and newer, "insteresting" stuff that you may or not want to buy but do want to listen to for a while. And if you tire of hearing Macarena after the fiftieth time (instead of the second) you don't kick yourself for wasting a buck.

And, naturally, you would have multiple caches defined by different profiles, depending on your mood; think of it as an XM radio competitor that caters to your tadtes, or a custom internet radio station that travels, instead of a music store, and you'll see that big hard drives *are* and will be better.

Of course, this requires a whole new breed of player software that is likely beyond the capabilities of the firmware embedded in most if not all currently shipping players.

Which is to say that, while Jupiter Research may be "literally" correct in their assessment of the typical online music store customer, circa 2003-2004, which *is* driven be the online teen crowd, volume-wise; any company betting the farm on that business model is at serious risk of becoming roadkill in 2005.

For me, that means my 20 Gb RIOT (75% full right now) will be obsolete in another year.
As expected.
No biggie.
Three years life will be enough.
Its successor?
Dunno, but I really like the size and form factor of the Creative (Nomad?) Portable Media Center.
I figure the 80Gb model will be a good deal when it hit $299 in summer 05. :-)
Gotta plan ahead in this racket...

They used to have stuff like this for the desktop just before and during the dot com boom and bust, anyone rember clickradio? the only similar option left is www.launch.com

I loved clickraido because you set a portion of your drive aside for music and every time you connected to the net it would sync and update your preferences, it was supported with quick 30 second ads based on a profile you set up.

PS
If anyone would like to help me resurect a service like this I think it would be fun. For PDAs and Portable Media Players

edit missed a key adjetive not 30 quick ads but a quick 30 sec ad

[Bill Gunn]

4GB is ideal? Give me a break. If I get a hard drive MP3 player, I want to put all of my music on it—and preferably keep it only there. That way I could save a whole lot of HD space on my PC, and have all of my music consolidated into one device (No more confusing differences between collections—yay!). The price difference between 4GB and much larger size players isn't enough—if I thought that any of these devices were worth the money (for me) at these prices, I'd get the bigger one.

I do not believe that one in a thousand people has 7500 LEGAL tracks. If you do, then based on an average cost of 12.50 per cd and and average song count of 15 songs per cd, you have well over $6000.00 invested in music. If you have that kind of money to throw around on music, I have a nice bridge I'd like to sell you. :roll:

[Kacey Green]

Bill Gunn you forget about the old people :wink: who have been buying music since before the 8 track or is it a track?

[Felix Torres]

I do not believe that one in a thousand people has 7500 LEGAL tracks. If you do, then based on an average cost of 12.50 per cd and and average song count of 15 songs per cd, you have well over $6000.00 invested in music. If you have that kind of money to throw around on music, I have a nice bridge I'd like to sell you. :roll:

Better recheck your math.
7500 legal tracks is around 600 cds.
That is about three cds a month for 15 years or so.
The technology is over twenty years old, so for an adult music lover over the age of 30, it would not be hard to spend, yes, $6000 on music over 15 years. $30-40 a month is less than dinner and a movie for two, which is the guideline a friend of mine uses to define discretionary spending. it is also less than your typical videogame-a-month habit for dedicated gamers.
No bridge-buying necessary.
(And that doesn't even factor in used-CD purchases or music club freebies.)

Now, if you said one in fifty or even one hundred, you might have a shot.

But by the same token, 2000 songs are a very common collection; less than 200 cds...

Don't forget, music collecting didn't start with NAPSTER...
It *is* possible to get lots of music legally and affordably; you just need to be over 30 to get there...
Don't think of it so much as a collection as an *accumulation*.
(Just don't ask me to price out my books...)

[Bill Gunn]

Better recheck your math.
7500 legal tracks is around 600 cds.
That is about three cds a month for 15 years or so.
The technology is over twenty years old, so for an adult music lover over the age of 30, it would not be hard to spend, yes, $6000 on music over 15 years. $30-40 a month is less than dinner and a movie for two, which is the guideline a friend of mine uses to define discretionary spending. it is also less than your typical videogame-a-month habit for dedicated gamers.
No bridge-buying necessary.
(And that doesn't even factor in used-CD purchases or music club freebies.)

Now, if you said one in fifty or even one hundred, you might have a shot.

But by the same token, 2000 songs are a very common collection; less than 200 cds...

Don't forget, music collecting didn't start with NAPSTER...
It *is* possible to get lots of music legally and affordably; you just need to be over 30 to get there...
Don't think of it so much as a collection as an *accumulation*.
(Just don't ask me to price out my books...)


You just made my point. It takes FIFTEEN YEARS at 3 CD's a month to build that kind of collection. And, that makes the gross assumption that an average of 3 CD's worth buying come out each and every month for fifteen years. You're argument also assumes that there is a marketable number of people whose musical tastes are so eclectic that on any given day they cannot narrow their playlist to a thousand or so songs. I'm sure some people can get into Bluegrass one month and Heavy Metal the next. I'm not sure that many people are mixing it up in the same playlist. I know you are going to tell me that you are that person and that's cool, but that does not represent the habits of the mass of consumers.

[Felix Torres]

I know you are going to tell me that you are that person and that's cool, but that does not represent the habits of the mass of consumers.

Oh, I know I'm not in the mass of consumers--those are 13-25 year olds who don't mind stealing and are PROUD of it; witness the posts on all the techie boards.

But I'm not 1 in 1000 unique.
At my best I'm a 98% percentile kinda guy. :wink:

All I'm saying is don't underestimate the over-30 market because we're the ones who buy all our stuff instead of stealing it. And yes, we have accumulations 15-years deep. More, including the vynil LPs. And at any point in time we just might get the urge to listen to just about anything in the collection, not just the top 1000 songs determined by some numerical algorithm.

Faced with the choice of a gadget that holds only part of my collection or all of it; I'll pay extra for the ability to hold all of it, independent of *any* computer.

And I know I'm far from unique that way.

[Tom W.M.]

4GB is ideal? Give me a break. If I get a hard drive MP3 player, I want to put all of my music on it—and preferably keep it only there. That way I could save a whole lot of HD space on my PC, and have all of my music consolidated into one device (No more confusing differences between collections—yay!). The price difference between 4GB and much larger size players isn't enough—if I thought that any of these devices were worth the money (for me) at these prices, I'd get the bigger one.
I do not believe that one in a thousand people has 7500 LEGAL tracks. If you do, then based on an average cost of 12.50 per cd and and average song count of 15 songs per cd, you have well over $6000.00 invested in music. If you have that kind of money to throw around on music, I have a nice bridge I'd like to sell you. :roll:
1. I am a teenager. I live with my parents and two brothers—they have a large number of CDs. (And yes, I actually do listen to their music. Anyone else enjoy The Mikado? That's a two CD set. So's my James Galway Meditations CD. That's a large chunk of space right there.)
2. I rip CDs at 320 kb/sec. MP3—that's often over a 100 MB per album.
3. As many others have mentioned here, a HD MP3 player can be used as an external drive. Any device like this that I own would inevitably become an external storage device—my My Documents folder takes up nearly 7GB (not including video, music, or most of my pictures), so that will take up a lot of space.
4. Ideally, I would carry a number of apps on the player with me, including the jukebox app for organizing the music and MozillaFirefox.

[Kati Compton]

You're argument also assumes that there is a marketable number of people whose musical tastes are so eclectic that on any given day they cannot narrow their playlist to a thousand or so songs. I'm sure some people can get into Bluegrass one month and Heavy Metal the next. I'm not sure that many people are mixing it up in the same playlist. I know you are going to tell me that you are that person and that's cool, but that does not represent the habits of the mass of consumers.
It's not necessarily that I have tastes *quite* that eclectic (though nearly). It's more that I never know what I'll be in the mood for in advance. So I like having a large selection available.

That being said, I think I'd be basically fine with 4 gigs. My current collection is approximately 11 gigs, all purchased. Plus a bunch of CDs that haven't been ripped yet...

[Kacey Green]

You just made my point. It takes FIFTEEN YEARS at 3 CD's a month to build that kind of collection. And, that makes the gross assumption that an average of 3 CD's worth buying come out each and every month for fifteen years. You're argument also assumes that there is a marketable number of people whose musical tastes are so eclectic that on any given day they cannot narrow their playlist to a thousand or so songs. I'm sure some people can get into Bluegrass one month and Heavy Metal the next. I'm not sure that many people are mixing it up in the same playlist. I know you are going to tell me that you are that person and that's cool, but that does not represent the habits of the mass of consumers.

I am that kind of person, in terms of taste not collection size. I have classical to country to heavy-metal to pop 40 back to techno, all in the same 50 or less song playlists. I have a preferance for music with soul (singers who are very passionate, about what doesn't matter) so that will dominate the playlists, but most of the small pllaylists I create have some elements of the whole collection, but as the collection grows this becomes harder to do with the small amount of memory offered in my current soultions ( burning audio cd's and stuffing my iPAQ with tunes currently it only has a 256mb cf card and a 128 sd card but the sd card is only for documetns and work/school related files so if it holds more than one song i'm running out of space

i rip all of the cd's that i own at wma 9 lossless and the ones i don't or that i bought off of itunes etc. are ripped at mp3 320

so in summary my listening style would be best suited by a player that could hold the entire collection with growing room and space for file transfers plus a battery life of at least 12hrs

[Jonathon Watkins]

Faced with the choice of a gadget that holds only part of my collection or all of it; I'll pay extra for the ability to hold all of it, independent of *any* computer.

And I know I'm far from unique that way.

Darn right Felix, that's where I am coming from. I'm over 30 and have accumulated marry a few CDs in my time. :) I just want to be able to hear any of them, all the time (with the built-in ability to pop in CF cards to take photos off from my Canon Pro 1, which is why I haven't bought a unit yet).

[jlp]

Thomson-RCA has such a device that does audio video and pix and includes a CF slot. Unfortunately the unknowledgeable engineers have included a Type I slot so you can't use any of the many IBM/Hitachi Microdrives. But at least ther's one.

By the way Archos have a CF module for the AV 3x0 multimedia jukebox; I don't know which card type it takes, tho.

[Len M.]

Well, we use our PDAs to do high-resolution audio recordings of live performances. A 24-bits/96 KiloSamples-per-second recording takes 2GB per hour.

We'd love to have the ability to record a music festival day of about 10 hours of music.

So it'd be great to have 20 GB on board or in-pocket. Or ideally, we could stream wirelessly to a network/Internet storage device. That way we wouldn't have to have large storage on the PDA.

The soon-to-be-released ASUS WLL-HDD should satisfy us.


Len Moskowitz
Core Sound
www.core-sound.com

[Intrigue]

Well, I'm clearly in the minority, as I rip at 192 *and* have 50+ GB of music.

I have a 40GB iPod that really holds 37 GB; thankfully, about 15GB of my collection is classical (which is "bigger" in filesize), new age or jazz, which I'm not as concerned with having with me. (FWIW, I have about 9000 songs).

(backstory)
I'm really an all-or-nothing person when it comes to music. I bought one of the first mega-multi-disc changers back in 95(?) and since then have been completely unwilling to change compact discs (I *hate* butterfly packages -- so un-butterfly-like, as butterflies are a good thing and not in the least annoying. Anyway).

I never had a CD-changer in my car, because I hated the idea that the CDs I wanted in the car at any given moment would be in the house or vice versa. My solution there was an in-dash minidisc player and mix MDs. "Mixes" fall outside the "all-or-nothing" realm because they're intentional and have flow.

For me, the decision to "go digital" was spurred on by three things:
(1) the fact that my collection had grown far beyond the two 200-disc changers, which meant there was a lot of my music I wasn't hearing (except for the "select" songs that made it onto mixes)
(2) the invention of the Audiotron (that lets me stream all my music from a PC, in my case a dedicated music server)
and
(3) the 40GB iPod, which was big enough to "hold it all" ... the same logic (or lack thereof) about the CD player in the car applied here: "What if the music I want to hear is not on the iPod?!"

(/backstory)
So now all my "real music" (which roughly equates to stuff I can sing to) is in my baby (at about 35GB), which makes me *very* happy! There are a lot of duplicate songs (the cases where I have a "best of" album as well as the original disc, for example), which I'm weeding out as time permits, allowing me to add more music (plus I have a GB or two to spare now).

I don't think I'd want only part of my music. I did buy a Sonic Rio an eon or two ago, and almost never used it because trying to figure out *which* songs I wanted (and get them onto the bugger) was such a pain.

That's probably more than y'all wanted to know. ;-)

[Jonathon Watkins]

...That's probably more than y'all wanted to know. ;-)

Not at all! Long, informative & thoughtful post are always appreciated! 8)

I'm very much with you in the 'all or nothing' ideology. If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well!

I know I will be getting more music in the future, so it's always good to plan ahead when it comes to devices like media players.....

[larrywms45]

:devilboy:

Let's see, 1000 songs versus 5000 songs. If we "assume" each song is 3 minutes, 1000 songs would take 3000 minutes to listen to once each. There are only 1440 minutes in each 24 hour period. Am I crazy or is this the better part of a complete day to listen to 1000 songs? Why would you want 5000 capacity. Sounds to me like too many people have too much time on their hands that could be spent being productive.

[Intrigue]

Those of you with 30 gigs of music consist of like 1% of computer users. There are those of us who:

1. Don't collect that much music
2. Purchase our music instead of mass downloading and transferring gigs at a time
3. Are satisfied swapping music in/out of our limited-capacity players.
&lt;snip>
.

FWIW, I don't think #2 is a fair statement to be applied in such a sweeping fashion. I have 50+ GB of music and it's all bought-and-paid for. There were a few cases where I downloaded files for CDs I already owned (since I didn't want to rip them myself!), but after a few of those I realized I'd rather rip from my own discs for quality control.

[Kati Compton]

:devilboy:

Let's see, 1000 songs versus 5000 songs. If we "assume" each song is 3 minutes, 1000 songs would take 3000 minutes to listen to once each. There are only 1440 minutes in each 24 hour period. Am I crazy or is this the better part of a complete day to listen to 1000 songs? Why would you want 5000 capacity. Sounds to me like too many people have too much time on their hands that could be spent being productive.
I don't think it's that people want to listen to everything they own in one day, but rather that they want a variety of music available for them to choose from based on what they're in the mood for at any given moment.

Just like most people probably have more CDs than they can listen to in any 24 hour period. They don't necessarily want to listen to ALL of them ALL the time, but may want to listen to ANY of them at ANY time.

[Jonathon Watkins]

:devilboy:

Let's see, 1000 songs versus 5000 songs. If we "assume" each song is 3 minutes, 1000 songs would take 3000 minutes to listen to once each. There are only 1440 minutes in each 24 hour period. Am I crazy or is this the better part of a complete day to listen to 1000 songs? Why would you want 5000 capacity. Sounds to me like too many people have too much time on their hands that could be spent being productive.

Ah, but you're assuming that one would be doing nothing else while listening to the music, which is far from the case! I am usually in an open plan office and the only way for me (and many others) to concentrate, is to put headphones on & listening to music to drown out the noisy distractions around. The same old songs can get tired really quickly, so having the variety availible is very useful.

I can't revise to music, but work very well to it - always have. Music make me *more* productive. How about you?

[Intrigue]

:devilboy:

Let's see, 1000 songs versus 5000 songs. If we "assume" each song is 3 minutes, 1000 songs would take 3000 minutes to listen to once each. There are only 1440 minutes in each 24 hour period. Am I crazy or is this the better part of a complete day to listen to 1000 songs? Why would you want 5000 capacity. Sounds to me like too many people have too much time on their hands that could be spent being productive.

Or perhaps we'd rather upload all the music at once and not ever have to mess with it again (which, to me, is a time-saver). When I compare the time it would take me to select *which* 1000 of the possible *9000* I might be in the mood for and put them in the iPod on an (even) weekly basis, to the amount of time to put 'em all there once and select what I want at the moment I want it...

The latter is definitely easier for me. YMMV, of course.

The other factor that comes into play for me is that there are at least 4 or 5 times a week I'll be talking to someone and we'll be trying to remember who sang a particular song (last week it was my pal Mike and I trying to remember who wrote "The Promise."*) -- well, given we're probably talking about I song I know, and given the fairly good liklihood that if I care enough about it to be discussing it I probably own it, there's a pretty good chance it's on my iPod. I look up songs on it all the time. I used to carry a db of my songs in my PPC; however, having the actual song is much more elegant, IMHO.

*When in Rome -- yes, I was sooooooo in my teen years during the 80's with my cool jelly shoes and flashdance sweatshirt...

[Jonathon Watkins]

Just like most people probably have more CDs than they can listen to in any 24 hour period. They don't necessarily want to listen to ALL of them ALL the time, but may want to listen to ANY of them at ANY time.

Very nicely and succinctly put Kati. :D

Variety is the spice of life........

[Intrigue]

You just made my point. It takes FIFTEEN YEARS at 3 CD's a month to build that kind of collection. And, that makes the gross assumption that an average of 3 CD's worth buying come out each and every month for fifteen years. You're argument also assumes that there is a marketable number of people whose musical tastes are so eclectic that on any given day they cannot narrow their playlist to a thousand or so songs. I'm sure some people can get into Bluegrass one month and Heavy Metal the next. I'm not sure that many people are mixing it up in the same playlist. I know you are going to tell me that you are that person and that's cool, but that does not represent the habits of the mass of consumers.

Gadzooks. If you factor in:
(1) age (yes, I'm turing 36 this year)
(2) joining BMG in a 13 for the price of 1 jobbie a ... erm ... "few" times (that's how I built up most of my "classic" rock collection... BMG is not as useful for alternative stuff, but they're trying)
(3) going to concerts twice a month and buying CDs from the artist (they get a bigger % that way)
(4) http://www.radioparadise.com -- a listener-supported internet radio station with *great* taste in music (IMHO)... I've bought 20 CDs in the last six months on account of them alone.
(5) some people *really* love music

I don't think you have trouble hitting 600 CDs.

Let me put it this way: Of the relatively random selection of people I know, I have more music than probably 80% of them. I have about the same amount of music (call it 800 CDs) as 10-15% of them. And 5% of them blow my collection out of the water! The interesting thing is that 5% is not a one-to-one correlation with technology people ... these are music geeks, which would overlap some, but not completely, on a Venn diagram.

[Intrigue]

You're argument also assumes that there is a marketable number of people whose musical tastes are so eclectic that on any given day they cannot narrow their playlist to a thousand or so songs. I'm sure some people can get into Bluegrass one month and Heavy Metal the next. I'm not sure that many people are mixing it up in the same playlist. I know you are going to tell me that you are that person and that's cool, but that does not represent the habits of the mass of consumers.

The other thing that comes into play for me is that often I don't just want a particular genre, or even artist, I want *the*one*song*that's*stuck*in*my*head (most recently, "Careful" by Guster), and that's *really* hard to predict. (Particularly since the song before "Careful" on the "playlist in my head" was "By the Mark" by Gillian Welch, quite a departure, thematically and musically -- saw her in concert last night, which is probably why).

[Janak Parekh]

The problem with this analysis is that it only looks backwards; to the past.
That's true. But, along with technology, the iPod mini will evolve (and grow!) as well. They've just gotta start somewhere. ;)

--janak

[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.

[Kacey Green]

Not to bash you JW but I dissagree with what it seems that you are arguing

This comes from a later thread spawned from this discussion:

In a storage card/dedicated device up to 256Mb – I enjoy having a few albums available & don't mind swapping around often.

I vote for that one, but I don't enjoy having just a few albums and taking a century to swap them. :S

I'm poor :(

That's what I've been telling Jonathon Watkins but he keeps blowing me off.

Maybe he's well off and been that way so long he can't relate to poor people or people with less discretionary income :twak: :pukeface2: :soapbox: :multi: (couldn't find shifty so all of these in his place)

[Kati Compton]

That's what I've been telling Jonathon Watkins but he keeps blowing me off.

Maybe he's well off and been that way so long he can't relate to poor people or people with less discretionary income :twak: :pukeface2: :soapbox: :multi: (couldn't find shifty so all of these in his place)
Well, Jonathan is not in charge of what size players are out there, and who can buy them, so I'm not quite sure what you want exactly you're looking for him to say.

The point of forums is to discuss, which can *sometimes* involve changing peoples' minds on things, but usually doesn't. ;)

So, yes, there are many people that can't afford the big space. And there are people that *could* afford it, if they *really* wanted it... But it just isn't a good idea at this point money-wise, then there's the people that just don't need it, and then there's the people that can (or can't) afford it and have purchased it.

There's all types, and no one is meant to be excluded - hence the many options in polls.

[Janak Parekh]

This comes from a later thread spawned from this discussion:
First off, please don't crosspost.

Second: what do you mean by Jonathon "blowing you off"? Is he not allowed to have a different opinion? Let me also add that it's very tough to make poll options that satisfy everyone. That doesn't mean he's deliberately ignoring you.

Maybe he's well off and been that way so long he can't relate to poor people or people with less discretionary income
Third: the "poor" argument is specious at best. If that's your argument, then why have digital players at all? After all, they're a luxury item in the first place, and CD players are cheaper -- even MP3 CD players -- than most flash players. And a Pocket PC isn't "cheap", per se. What if someone decides to buy a disk-based player instead of a Pocket PC? Or maybe a cheaper Pocket PC and an iPod, for example? I don't see how your argument works.

Fourth: the cost structure doesn't quite work the way you suggest. Flash players -- or Pocket PCs -- aren't an order of magnitude cheaper than disk-based players.

--janak

[Kacey Green]

This comes from a later thread spawned from this discussion:
First off, please don't crosspost.
Got'cha


Second: what do you mean by Jonathon "blowing you off"? Is he not allowed to have a different opinion? Let me also add that it's very tough to make poll options that satisfy everyone. That doesn't mean he's deliberately ignoring you.

In the other thread he posted the same point without rubtting my argument.


Maybe he's well off and been that way so long he can't relate to poor people or people with less discretionary income
Third: the "poor" argument is specious at best. If that's your argument, then why have digital players at all? After all, they're a luxury item in the first place, and CD players are cheaper -- even MP3 CD players -- than most flash players. And a Pocket PC isn't "cheap", per se. What if someone decides to buy a disk-based player instead of a Pocket PC? Or maybe a cheaper Pocket PC and an iPod, for example? I don't see how your argument works.

Fourth: the cost structure doesn't quite work the way you suggest. Flash players -- or Pocket PCs -- aren't an order of magnitude cheaper than disk-based players.

--janak

On that logic crackheads woudn't buy crack because it is an Illigal luxury, we will spend what little of the limited resource we have on as much as we can. If you offer me a 4GB microdrive or A PPC w/512MB CF card and headphones, if I don't already have the PPC, etc. that would be my choice,
if I do have the PPC and such I would gladly choose the extra storage (all this assuming i'm in the market for music storage of course :wink: )

[Janak Parekh]

In the other thread he posted the same point without rubtting my argument.
OK, but realize there have been nearly a hundred posts on the subject. It's not quite that easy to summarize everyone's opinion.

On that logic crackheads woudn't buy crack because it is an Illigal luxury, we will spend what little of the limited resource we have on as much as we can.
:huh: I don't understand the logic differentiating a chemical addiction and choosing between different gadgets, the latter all being in the same ballpark pricewise.

--janak

[Kati Compton]

In the other thread he posted the same point without rubtting my argument.
Unfortunately there are a lot of posts on this forum. While most posts get *a* response, we can't guarantee that they'll get a response from any one specific person.

[Kacey Green]

I'm going to end my debate now, i forgot my original point

[Jonathon Watkins]

In the other thread he posted the same point without rubtting my argument.

Ckacey, I'm sorry you're feeling ignored. :wink: As Janak and Kati said, it's not really possible to respond to *everyone* who replies in a thread. I've not had much time recently to read the threads, so I am a bit behind in responding.

I really can't see where you're coming from in accusing me of being 'rich' not relating to 'poor' folks. This thread is about a report which says that 4Gb is the sweet spot in terms of price/performance etc. I don't own a larger capacity mobile player, but I do have a 1Gb CF card, which I bough cheaply in the US. I got fed up of swapping round sound on my 256Mb SD card. I'd love to have a 4Gb CF card, but I can't afford (or justify) one just now. I'd love to have more capacity on my PPC, which is why I am looking forward to the new generation of tiny hard drives. When they are integrated into the next generation of PPCs we won't have as many music storage problems. :D

It is interesting to see the different strategies that folk use to listed to digital music on the move and that is that this thread is about. 8)

[Kacey Green]

I really can't see where you're coming from in accusing me of being 'rich' not relating to 'poor' folks.
That was a joke I make dry jokes about conspiracy theories sometimes.



I do have a 1Gb CF card, which I bough cheaply in the US. I got fed up of swapping round sound on my 256Mb SD card. I'd love to have a 4Gb CF card, but I can't afford (or justify) one just now. I'd love to have more capacity on my PPC, which is why I am looking forward to the new generation of tiny hard drives. When they are integrated into the next generation of PPCs we won't have as many music storage problems. :D


That was exactly wat I was saying the whole time (i feel the exact same way except I AM still stuck with a 256 MB card). It sounded like you were saying that people prefer to swap out their music, and the way the posts were worded it seemed as if you were reiterating that each time I made a comment in line with the above quote. The part about ignoring was because I thought you were making the comments directed at what I was saying, but without defending what I perceved as a disagreement to what I said (example I say gas cars are cheaper then electric cars, you say electric is better, you say electric is better,>> then i respond that gas is getting better at polluting less, you then say these people here like electric cars >> i say gas cars are faster , you say electric cars are better &lt;>>>&lt;&lt;> all this without saying why you feel this way making me confused as to what the point of the reply is)
does this make any sense?
I wasn't trying to badmouth you, I was just getting frustrated at what i percieved to be responces to my posts

now that that's all cleared up, back to the discussion (if any of that was confusing I will be glad to reword it)