# iPod text **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 18, 2007, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipod-text/426923 "2007-11-18T14:09:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2007, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipod-text/426923/1 "2007-11-18T14:09:09Z")
On an average track on my iPod, what percentage of the file is taken up by the text, as opposed to the music itself? IOW, if I remove all the info except for the title and performer, will I be able to fit noticeably more tracks on the iPod? ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2007, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipod-text/426923/2 "2007-11-18T14:19:11Z")
Using my own iPod as an example, I have just under 15 MB of video, about 12 MB of audio which consists of over 3,000 songs and around 50 or so audio podcasts of varying size. When I look at the summary following an update, the space taken up by “other” (which I assume is album art, text and anyting else that isn’t audio and video) is less than 200 kb. So my WAG is no, deleting extra text is not going to free up any significant amounts of space. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2007, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipod-text/426923/3 "2007-11-18T14:22:23Z")
Text will take up only 8 or so bytes per character, while the sound for a 3 minute song will take up a couple of **mega** bytes. If you need more space, you’d be better served by converting from mp3 to AAC format. Doing that can get messy though, so if you decide to try it be sure to back up your iTunes library first. Rather than use the iTunes ‘backup’ function for this, I just drag my music folder to a CD and burn it. Restore is as simple as dragging the folder back to my home folder. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2007, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipod-text/426923/4 "2007-11-18T17:14:18Z")
[QUOTE=Squink] Rather than use the iTunes ‘backup’ function for this, I just drag my music folder to a CD and burn it. Restore is as simple as dragging the folder back to my home folder. [/QUOTE] You can fit your entire music folder on a CD? Mine’s approaching 200G, with a lot more still to download. And yeah, I suspected I don’t have to worry about text size. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2007, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipod-text/426923/5 "2007-11-18T17:33:41Z")
[QUOTE=panache45] You can fit your entire music folder on a CD? [/QUOTE] I am old, and have not entirely embraced the new technology yet. However my music folder _does_ eat up a double sided DVD. I shudder to think of what it’ll look like when I finally get around to copying everything onto my HD. ---
**Author:** ![PuddingCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b4bc9f/32.png) [@PuddingCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PuddingCat)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipod-text/426923/6 "2007-11-19T14:30:03Z")
[QUOTE=Squink] Text will take up only 8 or so bytes per character, [/QUOTE] Hi. Sorry for the slightly-OT nitpick but surely this should be one byte per character? Or am I missing something in the way text is encoded in MP3 tags? Surely they can’t be doing any worse than Unicode[1]? tim [1] - sorry this exclamation is probably only amusing to geeks. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipod-text/426923/7 "2007-11-19T14:56:19Z")
Yes, 8 _bits_ per char, unless it’s [unicode](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode) or some such. That’ll go up to 4 _bytes_ per char.