# How long ago could the average person have started a digital music library? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 4, 2018, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970 "2018-11-04T15:09:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2018, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/21 "2018-11-04T19:55:16Z")
I just checked, and the oldest mp3s in my music library date back to 2000. It would have been practical for a few years before that, but I don’t know about being practical for ‘the average person’. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2018, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/22 "2018-11-04T20:11:13Z")
The bit rate of very early mp3’s is terrible. I have a collection from the late 1990’s that are 96Kbs. I haven’t looked at those old disc’s in years. They aren’t worth playing. They took very little storage and sounded OK by 1998 expectations. That’s why it’s important to keep the CD. Be prepared to rip again as processor speed and storage goes up. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2018, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/23 "2018-11-04T20:43:53Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > The bit rate of very early mp3’s is terrible. I have a collection from the late 1990’s that are 96Kbs. I haven’t looked at those old disc’s in years. They aren’t worth playing. > > They took very little storage and sounded OK by 1998 expectations. > > That’s why it’s important to keep the CD. Be prepared to rip again as processor speed and storage goes up. 96kbps is indeed terrible. But IIRC the typical standard back in the day was 128kbps. That bitrate sounds reasonable for a lot of material but is greatly lacking in frequency response at both ends of the spectrum. It’s been said that at low bitrates like 128k, AAC is noticeably better than MP3, though I’ve never really verified that firsthand. IMHO, 192k is “good enough” that it probably doesn’t need re-ripping, but 256k is better, and 320k is overkill. I have indeed reripped or repurchased some of my favorite stuff that I had at 128k. It just sounds too “dead”, almost like AM radio. Meanwhile in the modern era, Spotify sounds terrific even when streaming is fed into my home theatre from the tablet. Don’t know what bitrate they use for default streaming, but some pieces are just startlingly vivid. ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_K](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5ac83/32.png) [@Doug\_K](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_K)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2018, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/24 "2018-11-04T20:47:24Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Not always true. Pianists would sit and play and the piano they played on was set up to also make marks on a rolling blank sheet of paper. When you listened to a piano roll, it was entirely possible that you were listening to a specific pianist’s performance. > > [Piano roll - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_roll#Reproducing_pianos) > > The analogy between this style of recording and what we now consider to be proper recording technique is possibly something like the difference between vector and raster art, respectively. That was the standard way of creating piano rolls. But it wasn’t actually recording the performance. It was only recording their actions. The sound would vary wildly depending on the piano the roll was played through. Also, none of the nuances were “recorded”, making it sound somewhat mechanical. Every note plays back at the same volume, although on some player pianos there was a “track” on the edge of the roll that could control dynamics to a limited extent. I remember when “Gershwin plays Gershwin” was released on CD. The articles about it at the time said it was the closest we had to hearing a recording of Gershwin’s piano playing, but stopped short of claiming it was the real deal. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2018, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/25 "2018-11-04T21:26:56Z")
I just did a quick compression test of a .wav file: Pink Floyd’s _The Great Gig in the Sky_. ~50Megs. Various lossless compression programs reduce it to ~41Megs. Big whoop. The real “What the …?” was classic Unix compress (.Z) which would have been an early compression program available (1984) for this purpose back when. It reduced it in size by an amazing 100K.☹ Another classic compression program pkzip (1989) did about as well as the best ones. It looks like the only widely available lossy audio compression software before mp3 was [Audicom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audicom) (1989). Note that the standard sound-CD-ROM cards of the early 90s could take an analog stream and digitize it (and vice versa) well enough. But no compression. The CPUs of the era weren’t good enough to do real time anything (A2D, D2A, compression, decompression) on their own. ---
**Author:** ![Teuton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/teuton/32/3864_2.png) [@Teuton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Teuton)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2018, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/26 "2018-11-04T21:45:30Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Note that the standard sound-CD-ROM cards of the early 90s could take an analog stream and digitize it (and vice versa) well enough. But no compression. The CPUs of the era weren’t good enough to do real time anything (A2D, D2A, compression, decompression) on their own. I remember that even when I had a library of mp3 songs ripped off my cds on my computer (at about 3-5mb each, as I remember), my early computers I was doing this with struggled to play WinAmp\* and do anything else useful at the same time. I could just about surf the web, but attempting to play any game at all would cause chop. This would be around 96/97. \*It really kicks the llama’s ass ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2018, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/27 "2018-11-04T21:45:57Z")
That brings back the memories. They used to sell expansion cards for compression. IIRC zip and Jpeg were two of the formats and probably mp3. I bought a compressor board for video in the mid 90’s. They also aided in playing the video afterwards. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2018, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/28 "2018-11-04T21:54:05Z")
It’s easy to forget the original pc and even 286 computers didn’t support multimedia. Most original pc’s didn’t have a hard drive. They used floppy disks. The 286 usually had a 10 or 15MB hard drive. A bigger drive cost serious $$$. Sound Blaster kits with the drive and card didn’t come out until the late 80’s. I installed dozens of those kits into 386 and 486 pc’s for customers. That’s when people finally could play cd music on a pc. Ripping them to the drive soon came afterwards. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2018, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/29 "2018-11-05T00:39:26Z")
> [@Doug\_K](#): > > That was the standard way of creating piano rolls. But it wasn’t actually recording the performance. It was only recording their actions. The sound would vary wildly depending on the piano the roll was played through. Also, none of the nuances were “recorded”, making it sound somewhat mechanical. Every note plays back at the same volume, although on some player pianos there was a “track” on the edge of the roll that could control dynamics to a limited extent. > > I remember when “Gershwin plays Gershwin” was released on CD. The articles about it at the time said it was the closest we had to hearing a recording of Gershwin’s piano playing, but stopped short of claiming it was the real deal. Yeah, it’s a very poor vector system. But in theory you could record a music performance as a set of notes with, for example, n-dimensional splines that describe different attributes about how the note was played over the duration of the artist’s interaction with the instrument. That you could swap out the instrument doesn’t make it stop being a recording of that person. In a sense, it just means that you have a more flexible structure to store a hi-definition recording in, and you’re saved from having to isolate the different instruments that are part of a recording so that you can apply after-effects because you’ve recorded the mechanical movements rather than the combination of the intermix of sound waves. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2018, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/30 "2018-11-05T01:10:16Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > Thank you for the replies so far. To clarify, I’m picturing this type of scenario. I go to my local CD store and buy a CD, rip it to my computer, and don’t keep the CD. I want to keep the same music on my computer through the years as I get a new computer when the old one becomes obsolete. How far back can someone have started without running into a major roadblock in doing this? I did that about 1999 or 2000. It took me actual months - and an external drive - to rip and store my fairly extensive CD collection. But most of that is still on my current hard drive having been stored and ported over as I’ve converted from various formats. ---
**Author:** ![Dobbs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Dobbs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dobbs)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2018, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/31 "2018-11-05T01:39:04Z")
Another data point - the original click-wheel 5GB iPod was introduced in October 2001 (yes, I still have one, and, yes, it still works). Apple claimed (IIRC) 2000 songs, so at 10 songs per album, that’s 200 albums, a number that could reasonably be called a ‘library’. Other music players were available at that time, sure, but by October ‘01, any idiot (like me) could (and did) create a music library, and carry it around. ---
**Author:** ![excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e8c25b/32.png) [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/excavating_for_a_mind)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2018, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/32 "2018-11-05T01:50:28Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > In 1982 a typical PC hard disk held maybe 10 megabytes, and you were not going to fit many CD rips into that. By 1995 a CD burner was under $1000, and you had MP3, so let’s say around then as an initial approximation. By pure coincidence, Napster soon appeared, although people were sharing files well before that. I’m having a hard time with this. In 1982, your typical IBM PC did not have a hard disk; standard mass storage for most personal computers was on 5.25" floppy disks, although Apple was using 3.5 hard-shell disks. I won’t go so far as to say that you couldn’t get a 10MB hard disk for a 1982 IBM PC (or clone), but they certainly weren’t considered “typical”. They also would have been an external drive and (seriously) cost more than a typical used car. The first computer I bought that had an internal hard drive was in 1989, a Macintosh SE30 (it ha a 40MB hard drive). It cost north of $5000 and was considered high-end. The first digital music collections were CD collections (which replaced vinyl record collections). The CD format stored the music as .wav files and (I think) held a maximum of 700MB. It made little to no sense to try to copy a CD to a hard drive. It wasn’t until MP3 technology allowed compression of the .wav files was trying to maintain a music library on a hard drive feasible. While MP3 technology may have been developed in the late 1980s, it wasn’t until the late 1990s that it was even being considered commercially. Even then, many people were wary of any compression on audio files, so few people would have considered using it to replace their CD collections. It wasn’t until after the turn of the millennium that anyone I knew would consider a MP3 version (at 128kps or better) to be comparable to a CD. Even then, it wasn’t until hard drive capacities in the 100 GB range were available did it make sense to try to build a library on a hard drive over one based on CDs themselves. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2018, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/33 "2018-11-05T01:50:46Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > It’s easy to forget the original pc and even 286 computers didn’t support multimedia. Most original pc’s didn’t have a hard drive. They used floppy disks. The 286 usually had a 10 or 15MB hard drive. A bigger drive cost serious $$$. > > Sound Blaster kits with the drive and card didn’t come out until the late 80’s. I installed dozens of those kits into 386 and 486 pc’s for customers. > > That’s when people finally could play cd music on a pc. Ripping them to the drive soon came afterwards. yeah my cousin bought one of first available upgrade kits available in town and paid for 300$ for basically a soundblaster 16 500 mb hd and a 2x cd rom ……… but the siund was out of this world compared to midi beeps and bloops …the guns sounded like guns ……… ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2018, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/34 "2018-11-05T02:08:54Z")
> [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](#): > > I’m having a hard time with this. In 1982, your typical IBM PC did not have a hard disk; standard mass storage for most personal computers was on 5.25" floppy disks, although Apple was using 3.5 hard-shell disks. I won’t go so far as to say that you couldn’t get a 10MB hard disk for a 1982 IBM PC (or clone), but they certainly weren’t considered “typical”. They also would have been an external drive and (seriously) cost more than a typical used car. The first computer I bought that had an internal hard drive was in 1989, a Macintosh SE30 (it ha a 40MB hard drive). It cost north of $5000 and was considered high-end. > > The first digital music collections were CD collections (which replaced vinyl record collections). The CD format stored the music as .wav files and (I think) held a maximum of 700MB. It made little to no sense to try to copy a CD to a hard drive. It wasn’t until MP3 technology allowed compression of the .wav files was trying to maintain a music library on a hard drive feasible. While MP3 technology may have been developed in the late 1980s, it wasn’t until the late 1990s that it was even being considered commercially. Even then, many people were wary of any compression on audio files, so few people would have considered using it to replace their CD collections. It wasn’t until after the turn of the millennium that anyone I knew would consider a MP3 version (at 128kps or better) to be comparable to a CD. Even then, it wasn’t until hard drive capacities in the 100 GB range were available did it make sense to try to build a library on a hard drive over one based on CDs themselves. Nitpick: CD’s did not store audio as “wav,” they predated that format by many years. CD audio was stored in [CD-DA (“Red Book”)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc_Digital_Audio) format. Microsoft introduced .wav files when they were working on PC audio, the same way Apple developed [AIFF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Interchange_File_Format). Before AIFF, Apple used “.snd” files. ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2018, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/35 "2018-11-05T02:23:09Z")
I “started” my digital library back around 1997, when some friends of mine at college passed me a CD-ROM with a bunch of MP3s on it. I’d saved it, and used WinAmp to start building playlists. I had collected several other discs, and now have a pretty decent library of all sorts of stuff on a portable hard drive, a desktop, and an old iPod I use for travelling. Part of the reason I keep the library around is it’s ease of transferrability between new platforms. Digital music/movie libraries are wildly useful. I have in the past, and still do travel to places with limited/zero Internet connectivity (includes AM/FM radio, too). NetFlix/Hulu/Spotify/Sling does f\*ckall for me if I don’t have access to the Internet. I am happy to watch lots of seasons of old TV or movies on this tablet, that iPod, or my travelling laptop. The fact that I can listen to a month’s worth of music on something the size of a deck of cards still fascinates me. I’ll have to dig out some of those old CDs if I still have them. I vaguely remember hearing my first Daft Punk on WinAmp so long ago. . . Tripler Ahh, the good ol’ days; the nostalgia is coming back. . . ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2018, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/36 "2018-11-05T02:52:27Z")
> [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](#): > > The first digital music collections were CD collections (which replaced vinyl record collections) I was wondering if someone would point out that a CD collection _is_, technically, a digital music library. (And for some of us, they replaced cassette collections.) ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2018, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/37 "2018-11-05T03:40:00Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I was wondering if someone would point out that a CD collection _is_, technically, a digital music library. (And for some of us, they replaced cassette collections.) The OP specified “storing on a PC”. ---
**Author:** ![zbuzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zbuzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zbuzz)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2018, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/38 "2018-11-05T03:43:34Z")
> [@Dobbs](#): > > Another data point - the original click-wheel 5GB iPod was introduced in October 2001 (yes, I still have one, and, yes, it still works). Apple claimed (IIRC) 2000 songs, so at 10 songs per album, that’s 200 albums, a number that could reasonably be called a ‘library’. > > Other music players were available at that time, sure, but by October ‘01, any idiot (like me) could (and did) create a music library, and carry it around. FWIW, the original 5GB iPod tag was “1,000 songs in your pocket,” based on songs encoded at 160Kbps, so about 100 CDs. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2018, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/39 "2018-11-05T04:47:55Z")
> [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](#): > > I’m having a hard time with this. In 1982, your typical IBM PC did not have a hard disk; standard mass storage for most personal computers was on 5.25" floppy disks, although Apple was using 3.5 hard-shell disks. I won’t go so far as to say that you couldn’t get a 10MB hard disk for a 1982 IBM PC (or clone), but they certainly weren’t considered “typical”. They also would have been an external drive and (seriously) cost more than a typical used car. The first computer I bought that had an internal hard drive was in 1989, a Macintosh SE30 (it ha a 40MB hard drive). It cost north of $5000 and was considered high-end. > > The first digital music collections were CD collections (which replaced vinyl record collections). The CD format stored the music as .wav files and (I think) held a maximum of 700MB. It made little to no sense to try to copy a CD to a hard drive. It wasn’t until MP3 technology allowed compression of the .wav files was trying to maintain a music library on a hard drive feasible. While MP3 technology may have been developed in the late 1980s, it wasn’t until the late 1990s that it was even being considered commercially. Even then, many people were wary of any compression on audio files, so few people would have considered using it to replace their CD collections. It wasn’t until after the turn of the millennium that anyone I knew would consider a MP3 version (at 128kps or better) to be comparable to a CD. Even then, it wasn’t until hard drive capacities in the 100 GB range were available did it make sense to try to build a library on a hard drive over one based on CDs themselves. I think we are on the same page here, especially where the “average user” would never consider ripping a digital library off of CDs onto some other PC media until the cost per megabyte was appreciably less than keeping the original CDs. 1982 was mentioned since CDs became available and I wanted to compare how much storage an average user’s PC might have to the ~700 MB required to rip a CD when the latter first came out. (Not to say that PCs came with a CD-ROM drive, but the original question was about CDs.) By early 1983 you could certainly get an IBM PC/XT with an internal 10 MB hard drive, and/or a 5161 expansion unit, so it seems fair to say that the average PC user had at least 10 megabytes by 1983. You are correct that the original 1981-model IBM PC did not come with a hard disk. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2018, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/40 "2018-11-05T05:35:19Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > I think we are on the same page here, especially where the “average user” would never consider ripping a digital library off of CDs onto some other PC media until the cost per megabyte was appreciably less than keeping the original CDs. Many of the people I knew who were ripping to PC or, once we could burn, to a data CD, back then were keeping the CD, but they kept the CDs put away; they kept the CDs back home and took the computer to college, or ripped to their office/lab computer and kept the CDs in their house. It was the new version of ripping your own vynils to tape, then playing the tape: the tape was playable in more places (the car for example), easier to carry and if it broke, hey, you took the vynil out and recorded another tape. In some countries this is considered fair use so long as you don’t distribute. The cost that mattered was that of replacing a damaged CD. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970.md?page=3)