How many gigs = how many songs?

[Mf1232]

I was just curious about this.
So like, how many songs can 2, 4, 8, and 16gb hold?
(this is assuming that no other media is on the player other than mp3's.)

[CrowdAds]

[irldave]

Depends on the bit-rate and length of each song

[gregzx]

It depends on the size of the files.
For example, second of a 192kbps music file takes 192kb of memory.
Just do the math.

[JK98]

At 256 kbps, one GB holds around 9 hours of music. At 128 kbps it holds around 18 hours per GB. If your songs average 4 minutes each, that works out to 270 songs per GB at 128 kbps, or 135 songs at 256 kbps. Some people might have an average song length that is much higher than 4 minutes, or that is lower than 4 minutes.
Most people use a bitrate between 128 and 256 kbps. Some will use higher or lower than that though.Most mp3 player makers now seem to use 250 songs per GB as their standard claim for song capacity.

[Marvin the Martian]

As has already been said, it's completely variable. You also have to take into account stated vs. actual capacity of players/memory cards. For example, my 8GB player's actual usable capacity is 7.38GB, and my 16GB player's is 14.7GB.

[Dreamnine]

My Clip+ is full - 22.8Gb and I have 3268 songs so JK98 is pretty much spot on.

[eboyer93]

Originally Posted by gregzx

It depends on the size of the files.
For example, second of a 192kbps music file takes 192kb of memory.
Just do the math.

That means 23.4375 KB per a second of audio.

[CDMP3PlayerFan]

Originally Posted by Mf1232

I was just curious about this.
So like, how many songs can 2, 4, 8, and 16gb hold?
(this is assuming that no other media is on the player other than mp3's.)

As others have said, there are many variables involved when figuring out how many songs you can fit on your player. For example, if you encode your files in MP3 format at a constant bitrate, the file size works out roughly as follows:

- 128kbps: 1mb per minute
- 192kpbs: 1.5mb per minute
- 256kbps: 2mb per minute

I encode my MP3s in in variable bitrate. Due to this, there is no way to know in advance exactly how many songs will fit on my player since the file size can vary even if the songs have the same length. For example, I currently have 13 songs loaded on my player that are the same length (3:47), but their file sizes vary from 5.2mb to 6.5mb.

I currently have 1409 songs on my player (which has 7.2gb of usable storage), and they consists of a mixture of music and podcasts (many of which exceed 10mb in size). The total number of files I can load will increase/decrease depending on the files I remove from my player (removing one long podcast can give me the space for three or four songs).

[Mf1232]

alright, thank you all.

[Muka]

Lets see. My music library is currently at 20,425 songs with a total of 81.05 GB. That's what the Finder is telling me. Mainly its MP3 and AAC between 128 and 320kbps. Along with some Vorbis and FLAC encoded music.

[Marvin the Martian]

Foobar2000 tells me....5,594 items selected, avg. bitrate, 224kbps, 74.5% MP3, 18.7% WMA, 4.8% FLAC, 2% Vorbis....for a total of 42.2GB.

[ultrauber]

It's easy math...if you know that all your songs avg a certain length and are a certain cbr. But, in many cases, like my own, I have a huge mix - my shortest songs are 0:45 and they go on up to almost 20 minutes. Some of the old files are 128k cbr, some 192k or 256k, some vbr, v0 or v2, some abr, etc, etc, so even if I do the math. I have to look at every single song and factor its individual bitrate. I imagine you, and most people, have libraries in a similar state of quality, and thusly can't accurately determine this number. But, to summarize it, I have about 350 mp3 songs, and my mp3 library is about 3 gb.

[JSBach]

My iTunes, all songs @192kbps, i have 24,027, 127.58GB

[McDougal]

Following up on what everyone else has said......it really all depends on the bitrate and length of your files. My collection of MP3's is approx. 10GB, mostly high quality VBRs, but some CBR ones in there as well.

As Marvin has stated, an MP3 player of say 8GB will not always have 8GB free memory for music. In fact, my 32GB iTouch says it has 29GB total memory, while advertised as 32GB.

I'll post back when I confirm the size of my music collection in MP3 format.

[McDougal]

Foobar2000 says my entire MP3 collection is exactly 10GB

The average bit rate is 251kbps.

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by McDougal

Foobar2000 says my entire MP3 collection is exactly 10GB

The average bit rate is 251kbps.

Foobar says my MP3 folder is 111GB, average 224kbps. Enough to play for seven weeks, five hours, and seventeen minutes.

It is possible there are some more in the Amazon folder that I didn't transfer yet, though.

[McDougal]

Shit I need some more music !

But my average bitrate is higher than yours lol.

[IDvsEGO]

i need to get foobar. that avg bitrate is interesting. my collection was at 100gg last I checked. I really should clean some of the crap out though.

EDIT - windows says I have 20,694 files for a total size of 93.8GB...that doesnt count my FLAC files though.

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by McDougal

Shit I need some more music !

But my average bitrate is higher than yours lol.

Sure....but some of my collection was gifted to me, so I had no control over the bitrates of that stuff.

So what I'll do now, is add the rest of my music folder to foobar....then I'll show you that average bitrate once it all is added.

[McDougal]

Originally Posted by Marvin the Martian

Sure....but some of my collection was gifted to me, so I had no control over the bitrates of that stuff.

So what I'll do now, is add the rest of my music folder to foobar....then I'll show you that average bitrate once it all is added.

Some of my stuff was gifted to me too ! lol.