# How big is your music library? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 8, 2011, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-is-your-music-library/584788 "2011-06-08T21:48:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-is-your-music-library/584788/41 "2011-06-10T18:59:06Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > About 45 GB / 8700 songs / 25 days of music > > Doesn’t it start to become pointless after awhile to store all that music? Probably about a quarter of this music I’ve listened to less than 2 times. What’s the point of keeping 100,000 songs? It’s like you are adding more music faster than you could ever possibly listen to it. When I add a new song or cd, I put it in my New Unrated playlist, and I go through all these songs multiple times until I know them all. My New Unrated playlist currently has 179 songs in it (I’ve been a bit lazy about listening to the new stuff lately) - we bought some new cds that I have to listen to a few more times before I can rate them and delete them from the playlist. I am familiar with every other song of my 6645 - it’s not like the old songs fall out of your head when you learn new ones. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-is-your-music-library/584788/42 "2011-06-10T19:08:27Z")
A buddy of mine was in the used record business, then the used CD business. He is retired now, but over the years I’ve accumulated thousands of LPs, CDs, tapes, etc. Also, 15 GB of recently acquired stuff. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-is-your-music-library/584788/43 "2011-06-10T19:09:13Z")
One Enya Cd. And one Gordan Lightfoot Cd because its got the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald on it. ---
**Author:** ![cain7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/2acd7d/32.png) [@cain7](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cain7)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-is-your-music-library/584788/44 "2011-06-10T19:56:26Z")
> [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](#): > > I don’t find gigabytes a very useful measure, however. I prefer my music stored at full CD quality - that means that my terabyte external drive is full, but it doesn’t represent the same amount of music as someone who stores his music at a low bit rate might get a lot more music on the same storage device. I agree. Ultimately, my goal is to have everything digitized for playback out of a slave machine into an external DAC then into my system. There was no option on the poll for over 6,000 cds but it’s obviously well over 30gig. ---
**Author:** ![rhubarbarin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eb9ed0/32.png) [@rhubarbarin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rhubarbarin)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-is-your-music-library/584788/45 "2011-06-10T22:50:48Z")
My collection is ‘zero’ but I chose 1 gig or less… I don’t have a single song file on my computer/phone/whatever. I own some CDs I don’t listen to. If I want to hear music while I’m doing chores, I put on Pandora. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-is-your-music-library/584788/46 "2011-06-10T23:18:57Z")
I can’t answer this. I have an iPod Nano with 16G that is almost full, but I besides that I still have several hundred CDs that I haven’t downloaded yet. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-is-your-music-library/584788/47 "2011-06-10T23:21:32Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > When I add a new song or cd, I put it in my New Unrated playlist, and I go through all these songs multiple times until I know them all. My New Unrated playlist currently has 179 songs in it (I’ve been a bit lazy about listening to the new stuff lately) - we bought some new cds that I have to listen to a few more times before I can rate them and delete them from the playlist. I am familiar with every other song of my 6645 - it’s not like the old songs fall out of your head when you learn new ones. I’m constantly surprised by the shit I have on my iPod. I’ll hear a song on the radio or tv or whatever and load it into my music collection only to find three copies already there. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-is-your-music-library/584788/48 "2011-06-10T23:42:21Z")
If I want to listen to a song online, I hit up YouTube. Sure, I have a 30 gig collection, but I don’t know what most of it is. It’s currently on a drive that may be failing, and I found I don’t care enough to back it up. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-is-your-music-library/584788/49 "2011-06-11T02:38:47Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > If I want to listen to a song online, I hit up YouTube. The only place I have time to listen to music on a regular basis nowadays is in my car, on my commute to and from work. Maybe I’ll have internet in the car one day, but not yet. ---
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-is-your-music-library/584788/50 "2011-06-11T03:38:19Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > The only place I have time to listen to music on a regular basis nowadays is in my car, on my commute to and from work. Maybe I’ll have internet in the car one day, but not yet. I personally haven’t set this up, but co workers of mine play pandora from their phones on the commute over the car stereo. They say it works without skipping. ---
**Author:** ![GameHat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ed655f/32.png) [@GameHat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GameHat)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-is-your-music-library/584788/51 "2011-06-11T04:36:08Z")
/replied to wrong post ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-is-your-music-library/584788/52 "2011-06-22T23:33:56Z")
I have an iPod touch and a streaming service like Apple’s service would be useful to me if our IS department allowed me to connect my iPod touch to the company WiFi network. I have hundreds of gigbaytes of ripped CDs (nothing illegal, not that this matters) at home and I listen to them at work. About every couple of weeks I replace the songs on my iPod touch with new songs to listen to with my headphones at work. Sometimes I feel like I would want to listen to one of the albums I have at home but I can’t do it until I load it on the iPod. As other people have mentioned, the size of my music folder is not based just on the size of my CD collection, but also on the quality level I chose when I copied the CDs to my hard disk. Nowadays, for copying anything to the computer (CDs, scanned photos, etc) I always use the highest quality possible. I figure that storage devices are constantly getting smaller and increasing in size, and the dollars you save now, you will be more than likely to regret later. I have many photos that I ended up scanning again because 15 or 20 years ago I scanned them in at a low resolution to save space. ETA: I think that the results of this poll will be biased towards the high end of the spectrum, i.e. people will be more likely to read the thread and vote if they have large music collections on their hard drives. ---
**Author:** ![obfusciatrist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4af34b/32.png) [@obfusciatrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obfusciatrist)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-is-your-music-library/584788/53 "2011-06-23T02:41:07Z")
1 song. Suicide is Painless because it was the first song I thought of when testing out iTunes on my iPhone. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-is-your-music-library/584788.md?page=2)