10,000 375 tunes in your pocket
posted Sep 7th 2005 11:20AM
Would you believe it if we told you a market research group polled 1,062 owners of portable audio devices and found
that on average each person was only carrying around 375 songs in their pocket? Granted, the study found that half the
users polled were carrying devices only capable of playing 100 or fewer songs (i.e. <512MB capacities)—but the
interesting bit was that the iPod users polled only had 504 songs loaded onto their players on average, compared to the
246 songs of non-iPod owners. Without needlessly getting too much into the iPod shuffle's market penetration and all
that, we think it sounds like they either caught a group of early sub-10GB iPod users, or some particularly lazy lazies
who didn't feel like making the most of that capacity. Or maybe they're just rocking to some serious 25-minute heavy
psych jams, guess we'll never know. [Warning, PDF link]
[Via TechDirt]
Or maybe these people are buying iPods without really having a need for them. I've thought that for a long time but this is the first survey evidence to support that theory. I'd like to see a larger sample size though.
Among my less geeky pals and those who didn't previously own a huge music collection, I can confirm they don't scratch the surface when it comes to capacity. One of my buddies put like his favorite half dozen albums on his iPod mini and that was that - not even any playlists or purchased iTunes. Even my Samsung "gym" MP3 player, which may have 256MB or 512MB of memory, never has more than one album on it at a given moment.
Just for shits and giggles, how about taking an unofficial poll here of how many songs people have on their iPod?
For starters, I'm at 4143, more or less the limit on my 20 gig. I'm in the situation where I have to take off old music when I want to add new CDs.
They also may be using their devices partly for music and partly for portable data storage. A few years back I went out in search of a keychain flash drive, and realized that, for what they were charging, an iPod would have been more cost effective.
I think you have your "greater than" and "less than" signs mixed up
"...playing 100 or fewer songs (i.e. >512MB capacities)—but..."
I think you're trying to say "less than 512MB capacities" which would be <512MB.
They must have missed my segment of the population: 4700 tracks on a non-iPod.
Hector, I think you're right, though I wish you weren't.
I have the 6 GB mini and have to take stuff off every time I want to put a new cd or podcast on it.
I have 24 GB in my iTunes. Maybe we are just geeks.
3,454 songs (about 30 pictures) on a 30GB colour. I have about 11 GB of space left.
According to http://www.itunesregistry.com, the average songcount was 3,686 songs (based on 4,133 users). Of course, this is really an average of iTunes' track counts, not iPod's, so you can expect the "real" number to be lower.
20GB 4G unit, full. Already removed music I rarely listen to (no stars to 1 star, I think). Entire music archive is 25GB, with all my CDs in those big fat 300-CD albums in my closet, never to see the light of day again -- until both the iPod and the hard drive crash at the same time. So yeah, never.
I'd love a 40GB or even a 60GB, but they're too fat.
I've got a 40 Gb iPod with about 1,200 songs and about many Gb of data.
Half of the songs I don't even like, but either I'm too lazt to delete them or I have some anal retentive reason to keep my digital albums whole.
So, my music collection alone probably doesn't require a 40 Gb iPod. But, it's perfect for the multiple tasks of carrying around all the songs I like, storing podcasts I want to listen to, and acting as portable firewire and USB hard drive. Plus, it fits in my pocket.
Most people probably don't own a thousand songs. I know a lot of people who are content to have a hundred or so on an iPod mini.
Then there's the people with decent CD collections, and then the people who download a lot, and then the people who do both. But a pretty subsantial group just don't care enough to amass a large music collection.
I believe that surveys such as this, while more anecdotal than scientific, still show that Apple was dead on to put out the Shuffle. They saw the capacity needs and use habit of a large population of portable music player users and filled the market gap with a product.
Geeks like Engadget readers (myself included) lament the fact that the Shuffle doesn't have a screen or the fact that the ROKR may (or may not, we'll know in a couple of hours) only hold 100 or so songs. However, for a large market, this is all they need or want. Remember, the ratio of Engadget geeks to total iPod users is probably about 1:100, and Apple's going follow the money rather than the blogs.
super structure!!! a sensible comment! Alex, why do you wish Hector weren't right? does it affect you if people use 2% of their iPod capacity? Really?
For our engadget survey, my 40GB iPod holds 3375 songs and about 1GB of files, leaving around 15-18GB free.
I've got a first gen ipod that i don't use any more. Recently all i use is my 1g shuffle with 256 set aside for data key use. I've realised, I'm on my computer everday and constantly revising/making playlists and I listen to music for ~2 hours tops a day- a shuffle is all I need- and it is soooooo light.
As I'm sure most shuffle users have figured out it is pretty easy to navigate a playlist without an LCD if you group by artist/album and use shuffle to hope around and then switch to sequential when you find the artist/album you want.
And I'll never "buy" an mp3 as long as I live.
Does this surprise anyone?
American consumers (and I will admit to being guilty of this myself) are obsessed with excess capacity that never gets used. How many SUVs do you see on the road with one person in them? How many features of Microsoft Office never get used? How much uneaten food spoils and gets thrown out after people buy the 'Family Size?' How many beautiful, multi room homes have rooms that are rarely ever even stepped in?
Americans are driven towards the BBD- Bigger, Better Deal. Why buy the MP3 player with 2000 songs when, for just $50 more, you can have 5000 songs? Sure, you only have 300 songs in your music collection, but what if you get that raise and can finally go on that shopping spree you've always wanted to on the iTunes Music Store? Then your gonna have 8000 songs... WAIT! I better get the 60gb iPod!
Life is hard. Harder if you are stupid.
What about data?
I(actually my wife) has a 60GB Creative and we have all of our songs on it with room to grow. I think there is around 8000+ songs on there now. I actually think it's silly to have a small hard drive player that can only hold a fraction of your songs. It makes more work for you. If you have a larger unit and a larger drive then you have access to all your tracks all the time whenever.
I've got a 20g and only have about 1000 songs on there. And I was sued! You'd think they have bigger fish to fry...
Oh and what if people have 500 loss-less songs?
According to my Rio Karma, I've got 1470 tracks on here, totalling 16.6Gb.
That said, I've got a lot of long MP3 mixes and such, despite ripping most of my CDs to OGG and having 1 file per track.
I'm maxed out on 10GB, and would be almost maxed out on a 20GB. I'm waiting for the 40GB iPod video to be as thin as the 20GB.
I have got a 40GB iPod Photo and I have 4603 songs on it and 200 photos. I also use my iPod as a external HD and have about 6GB a files on it
i have about 8,050 songs on my 40 gig (yes... i am running out of room). That said, i am a huge music geek and own 500 cd's so i don't think that i am the "general population" when it comes to music. most people i know do not have that many songs in their ipods - in fact, most people i know don't even bother with anything over the 20 gig.
Got 4857 songs and all proper songs. The 60gb ipod is what i have and i dont find them to fat, infact i find they fit nicer in my palm.
First point thats Two days in a row we had some good American Bashin HEE HEE and both times they have mentioned SUV's
the capacity thing aint an american thing tho, i know loads of people who got 20Gb, 40Gb and 60 Gb and dont manage to get them half full, they bought a 60gb one to say i got a 60Gb ipod u only got a 40Gb, so it aint americans it just people obsesed by looking good!,
i myself had a first gen pod, i always just choped and changed my tracks as i chose, i got a 4Gb mini, it so much smaller, i could have went 20, 0r 30GB or whatever but it just as easy to dock ure pod and change ure tunes, saves Money and WEIGHT!!
60GB iPod
5412 songs, 1543 pictures
I can't wait until iPod is no longer dominating like it is now, the products will become so much better so quickly, it will be great.
I think a lot of people buy iPods because they're the 'it' item...hopefully not for long, I'm personally sick of it all.
I've got a little over 3,100 songs, but about 95% of that is high quality (200kbs) ogg files and about 3% are lossless files (wavpack and flac). The last 2% are mp3's.
I'm trying to move all of my good stuff over to lossless but that'll take a while.
The shocking thing is that these people that have 20gb ipods with only a few hundred songs probably have them encoded mostly at 128kbs and lower. I don't get it, but I'm sure most people don't get why I bought a pair of $950 custom IEM's for my x5.
change that look good to TRYING TO LOOK COOL, THEY FAIL LOSERS
before the 1g ipods came out i had 10 gigs of music. now i have a 4g 40gb and have about 65 gigs of music and while i dont listen to everything every day (obviously) its always hard to take off something old (dylan) to add something new (arcade fire). i dont know how many tracks because i keep music i dont put on my ipod in a different folder but i guess its around 11500 now.
i do have friends who want to buy 40 gig ipods with 15-20 cds to their names. if you have the money, why not i guess?
anyone know when/if i'll be seeing a 100 gig ipod? im looking to sell my 40 for a 60 but if a 100 is on the horizon i might just wait. the only 100 gig player is the new archos $800 video player and while that would be nice, id rather spend the extra money on an hdtv.
I think most people were happy with their old personal stereos, with one 90 minute cassette containing two albums.
For the survey; I have 1966 "songs" on my 3G 15GB iPod. That's very podcast and audiobook heavy, though, so it's just about maxed-out when you include some non-audio files on there. I'm kind of waiting to see where the phone/video/flash-drive iPods go before I decide to upgrade, though.
Thanks, JK. I try and be sensible, although the grammar suffers because of it.
they need to poll people such as myself 5 more tunes or so and i am putting in for another it turns out 30 gig wasn't enough
My 40-gigger only holds 6,667 files from my massive 20,000 track collection.
ipod photo 40GB.... 6857 songs, no photos (deleted em for space) for some reason, 'capacity' says 37.1GB ONLY and not 40GB!! hidden partition? available space of 5.4GB still...
my 40GB ipod cruises at about 2000 songs. . .I leave most of it empty for files, since I'm a photographer it really doesn't pay to use jumpdrives or burn CDs just to move around 100MB+ scans or photoshop files.
They should have included data storage as part of the poll.
3698 songs and a few photos on a 20gigger.
flipmyx: Your iPod's 40gig drive needs to have space to index all your files so it knows where to find them physically on the disk when you queue a song up, hence the 2.9gigs you seem to be missing.
I've got 1956 songs on my 30g, or 10.69 out of 27.86 gigs used. I originally wanted to spring for the 20g, but as my local store was out and I was impatient, I spent a little more for this one.
Next time I'll be picking up a 20g photo. That should be plenty of space, and about $130 less than what I paid for my first iPod.
441 songs on my 5gig Zen Micro. Half my capacity is unused. I usually replace all the songs once I get bored with them. Works for me.
Pancake: "Maybe we are just geeks" Huh. Ya think?
I have a 5GB Zen and it's always full with about 1000 tracks. I have about 27.2 GB on my computer, of which maybe 7GB is Yahoo subscription content. I may upgrade soon to a 30 or 40GB player just so I don't have to delete perfectly fine music to make room for more.
I have a Samsung YP-T7Z, with a whopping 1GB of storage. I normally carry about 130 songs, a lot of them ripped from CD's at 192Kbps. I use it for a couple hours each day and its fine.
Maybe too many folks are listening to the nerds that whinge: "Why would anyone buy a 4GB device when it's only $50 cheaper than the 20GB device?" Huh, huh? Did you ever think about that: that the nerds are giving bad advice to the average, social music listeners.
I've got a 30gb ipod photo with 3133 full resolution photos and 3600 songs
For the unofficial survey here - I have 2375 tracks on my 20GB YH-925 at 192k encoding. That leaves around 25% free for either new music or for when I get the time to finish ripping the rest of my CD collection. Honestly, I'd prefer to have an 80GB player and store everything at 320k and then still have enough space left over for new albums over the next couple of years.
I have about 411 songs on my iPod mini. I don't have the time to add more between work, my 2 hour commute, and a social life. Guess I'm not a *true* geek then!!
5011 songs over 25.47Gb. A 512Mb shuffle works fine for me, if I'm feeling lazy I let autofill from a smart playlist, otherwise I just put on an album or four to listen through.
i have 4721 on a 30gb photo. i have so much on it but i only listen to the same things over and over again. sometimes i rock the shuffle option just so i listen to some ohter stuff.
1735 on a 15gb (3rd gen. Down w/the click-wheel)
I only bring less than 100 songs, it's enough for me
I have over 300GB of music which amounts to almost 60,000 songs. No iPod is quite capable enough for me, and even iTunes is almost unusable with that much music.