iTunes 32k Limit

[MacRumors]

A Macintouch reader (http://www.macintouch.com/itunes10.html#feb15) reports that he's hit the maximum number of files that iTunes can handle.

32,000 songs appears to be the max. I was at 31,992, and added a folder with 12 tunes in it. All of the songs appeared to be added (they showed up in the progress box, and, as iTunes was testing the volume levels, it went through all 12 tunes). But the list is stuck at 32,000 songs, and only the first 8 of the 12 tunes I just added are showing up.

Just for interest... assuming an average song length of 4MB... 32000 MP3s would take up appoximately 128,000 MBs of storage, and would require seven 20GB iPods to hold all the songs.

[MrMacMan]

DAMN. 32k I really would think is enough music for anybody, but I guess now...

wow that HAS to be a record. :eek:

[rjett]

I couldn't even imagine having that many mp3s...that's like 2,500 CDs.

[Rajj]

I concur that is a lot of jams, but why cap it!!
What about recording companies that have millions of songs, that want to use iTunes!!

[BernieC]

The bigger question is - how could you ever hope to listen to all that music? I'm still working thru my collection of 3200 songs. I've got about 2300 that I haven't listened to.

[howard]

thats disgusting...

i'm happy with my 1200 thank you very much

[systembug]

Should'nt it be rather 32768 Songs? Hm...

[peterjhill]

One of the workstudy students in my group at work has for a project setting up a raid system to hold lossless compressed files for the entire college music library. They expect to need about 1.5 TB of storage. I told them to look at the XServe RAID. They probably would not use an XServe as the server though, they would most likely use Linux on some kind of x86 platform with a fiber channel interface.

[jante99]

I wonder who the RIAA will be targeting next?

[DavPeanut]

I hope iTunes 4 fixes this. I want a collection larger than XM radios, and they have 200,000 cds.

[Meanwhile]

$5 says the next version of iTunes will have an "unsigned" in front of all those ints and a higher check, thus letting us get.. a lot more songs. Even if it's only 2^31 instead of 32 ( I wonder why they're preserving the top bit. Maybe it was written in RubyCocoa ;) ), that's still more songs than anyone has a reasonable amount of hard disk space for.

[janey]

i have more music that that (32k songs) but i never use iTunes because it slows down all the integrated iApps that way.

[MacFan25]

That is amazing that someone has 32,000 songs. I don't even have 500 songs in iTunes.

[Freg3000]

Seems like everyone likes to forget that iTunes is a consumer program. Most consumers don't have 32,000 songs.....so this limit is not a problem.

If you have that many songs, you need to get some special software.

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by MacFan25
That is amazing that someone has 32,000 songs. I don't even have 500 songs in iTunes.

I have a PC user friend with 160 GB of songs. it boggles my mind like nothing else. i myself have 8 GB, but i can easily imagine much more, if i cared to download songs.

but yeah, i can't imagine ever getting to the current iTunes limit. this is so hilarious.

[alex_ant]

Apple needs to move the iApps away from whatever kind of slow and limited flat-file database(s) they're using now and towards a real database like MySQL or something. Apple shouldn't have to document the iApps' database formats because they should all hook into the same database. There should be no limit to the number of items you can have in your database, and iTunes and iPhoto should not be as slow as they are - and they should not get even slower as you add more media.

Is it just me, or have iPhoto and iTunes been stagnating lately? They're basically the same as 1.1.1 and 2.0, except for a few slight changes. iMovie has improved, and there have even been new iApps in the past year. But the two important ones (for me) still leave much to be desired. iPhoto is still absolutely butt-slow and it still needs big interface improvements. iTunes has a terrible-quality MP3 encoder and still doesn't have AAC support, its decoder uses way too much CPU and is not AltiVec-enhanced, etc. These are all problems that have existed since the beginning, but all Apple does is ignore them. It's not that Apple has just found out about them and is working on fixing them - iPhoto has sucked since version 1 and still sucks just as much. Apple has made all the improvements nobody has asked for and none of the improvements anybody has. iTunes is good but could easily be so much better.

[janey]

you're completely right. you're not the only one who thinks that

[Styvas]

I'm not much of an MP3 guru, so I'm interested in more info on the previous comment about poor encoding by iTunes. Speed notwithstanding, I'm mostly interested in sound quality. Is the iTunes encoder deficient in this area, or is it the process that your critical of, not the final result?

Steve

[holmesf]

Originally posted by Meanwhile
$5 says the next version of iTunes will have an "unsigned" in front of all those ints and a higher check, thus letting us get.. a lot more songs. Even if it's only 2^31 instead of 32 ( I wonder why they're preserving the top bit. Maybe it was written in RubyCocoa ;) ), that's still more songs than anyone has a reasonable amount of hard disk space for.

unsigned int songs[pow(2,1000)];

Thats what we really need.

[DHagan4755]

Originally posted by übergeek
you're completely right. you're not the only one who thinks that Geez, I never thought of this...but why don't those knowledgable on databases write to Apple and suggest this? After all, Apple praises themselves as using standards...

[springscansing]

Originally posted by Styvas
I'm not much of an MP3 guru, so I'm interested in more info on the previous comment about poor encoding by iTunes. Speed notwithstanding, I'm mostly interested in sound quality. Is the iTunes encoder deficient in this area, or is it the process that your critical of, not the final result?

Steve

Nah, it's very, very, very fast, and the sound quality is alright. I don't know what alex is talking about. For any mp3s I were to release publically though, I still use AudioCatalyst 2. It only runs in classic, and its not free, but it makes the best sounding mp3s available.

[bigtiny]

Well gee...that's an enlightened attitude!!!
What do you mean 'special software' and why SHOULDN'T 'consumer' software handle more tunes than that?

This limitation is an arbitrary one at best and from a programming point of view can probably be easily changed.....so why not?

I've just finished converting a 2000+ CD library to iTunes....because iTunes is the best MP3 librarian I've found...I use Macs....I'm SUPPOSED to want to use Apple products, right?!?!? So why are people so quick to say 'well you're doing something most people don't want to do so tough!' that's nonsense......

There should be no limit to the number of entries in the iTunes library as long as the platform it's running on does not run out of RAM or disk space.....

BT


Originally posted by Freg3000
Seems like everyone likes to forget that iTunes is a consumer program. Most consumers don't have 32,000 songs.....so this limit is not a problem.

If you have that many songs, you need to get some special software.

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by Styvas
I'm not much of an MP3 guru, so I'm interested in more info on the previous comment about poor encoding by iTunes. Speed notwithstanding, I'm mostly interested in sound quality. Is the iTunes encoder deficient in this area, or is it the process that your critical of, not the final result?

Steve

You can encode MP3s from like 96 Kbps to over 320, so i don't know what alex was talking abotu either. i LOVE the iTunes encoder, except that it adds spaces into songs--which really screws up the song transitions on my pink floyd albums i rip. but alex made some great points about apple needing a real database in iTunes. it really does slow down like nothing else (loading and closing) when you start piling on the songs.

[yosoyjay]

Interesting to note, but really I don't care.

The number of songs I have on iTunes stays around 1500 because I am constantly adding and removing stuff. I basically use it to sample new stuff and organize misc. singles that I usually transfer to cd. In general I prefer to listen to music off my cd player because it has a better DAC.

[LimeiBook86]

who needs 140gb of music anyway, jeez, I have less than 300 megs of music and I have an iPod. Sure I can add more but adding CDs to an iPod takes forever. 10 seconds my ass...

[imamacguy17]

why do you people complain the product is free. if you want more stuff go to the store and buy a copy of a fuller program. im not a database geek or an mp3 guru so i cant comment on official specs but i've never had any problems. i dont think we should complain when apple is providing the best MP3 app for FREE.

[alex_ant]

Originally posted by Styvas
I'm not much of an MP3 guru, so I'm interested in more info on the previous comment about poor encoding by iTunes. Speed notwithstanding, I'm mostly interested in sound quality. Is the iTunes encoder deficient in this area, or is it the process that your critical of, not the final result?

Steve
The encoder iTunes uses is the same that SoundJam used to use. It's several years old and was good for its day but is now behind the times. It's very fast, but pretty much anybody will agree that LAME sounds better at the same bitrate.

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by imamacguy17
why do you people complain the product is free. if you want more stuff go to the store and buy a copy of a fuller program. im not a database geek or an mp3 guru so i cant comment on official specs but i've never had any problems. i dont think we should complain when apple is providing the best MP3 app for FREE.

i don't think iTunes is free. i would never have paid 3000$ for my TiBook if it didn't come with OS X--which, i think that OS X includes iTunes, iPhoto, that slew of things-- this is easily arguable, seeing as it's in the box with it.

iTunes isn't free. if they sold you OS X with nothing on it, just an OS with nothing--would you buy it? you can't do that anymore. no one does that, not even free OSes like redhat.

we buy apples. we buy OS X. we can complain.

you can't get itunes 3 without OS X. we have paid for it.

[DavPeanut]

Someone said 2^31, but thats only 2 billion songs!! Thats ok i guess. Its only 30 times the total of all the things that have been uttered by man during its existance.

Remixes!!!!!!!!!:D

[Billicus]

Originally posted by LimeiBook86
who needs 140gb of music anyway, jeez, I have less than 300 megs of music and I have an iPod. Sure I can add more but adding CDs to an iPod takes forever. 10 seconds my ass...

It's only ten seconds if you have it in your computer. Apple doesn't figure in the ages it takes to import the CD.:rolleyes:

[yzedf]

the limit is based on the size of the adderessable database. sounds like 32 bit...

[LethalWolfe]

There are always going to be people who break the curve. The iApps are aimed at the average home user. If we take a poll and see how many people have 32k songs I don't think many people will answer "yes." It's not aimed at DJs or radio stations or companies or audiophiles it's aimed at average home users.

iDVD has limitations and interface issues that I don't like but iDVD isn't geared for pro/prosumer use. It's a "free", consumer app so I'm not pissed when it won't do the non-consumer things I'm asking of it. If your needs go beyond what the iApps can give than pony out some $$$ and buy an app that will do what you need done. iMovie is great for my parents, but it's worthless for me. Does that mean it sux? No, that means I need to buy an app that suits my needs.

Are the iApps perfect? No, but IMO they do a a very good job at what they are designed to do and for the target audience they are aimed at.


Lethal

[ozubahn]

If I have to live with anything less than three or four months between song repeats (listening 24x7) I just go crazy...
But really, perhaps our assumptions are wrong here. Maybe this guy likes sound effects, and carries around 32,000 half-second samples of dogs barking, doors closing, and people belching, all in his original 5gig iPod.


Edit: This post is attempting to be facetious. I have about 1200 songs in my iTunes library. An no, I do not have any sound effects.

[MacFan25]

I just have CDs in my iTunes for now. Is there a Kazaa for Mac or anything like that?

[DavPeanut]

Originally posted by MacFan25
I just have CDs in my iTunes for now. Is there a Kazaa for Mac or anything like that?
Limewire

[DavPeanut]

Originally posted by ozubahn
If I have to live with anything less than three or four months between song repeats (listening 24x7) I just go crazy...
That would be 32k songs right there. How many songs do you have?

[MacFan25]

Thanks DavPeanut

[JBytes]

Originally posted by rjett
I couldn't even imagine having that many mp3s...that's like 2,500 CDs.

Actually, I have well over 3,000 CDs. I can tell you one thing though: it's a drag when you have to move. I stopped buying CDs when the record companies decided to go after Napter, and started calling us "thieves" for downloading MP3s.

--JBytes

[janey]

iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie are free...download them at http://www.apple.com/downloads

Okay, so technically they're free but we gotta have OS X to use them Big deal...you can't run any program without an operating system!

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by übergeek
iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie are free...download them at http://www.apple.com/downloads

Okay, so technically they're free but we gotta have OS X to use them Big deal...you can't run any program without an operating system!

true, but iTunes, iMovie, and iPhoto are OS X's marketing pitch. they don't advertize "menu extra enabler," or "meteoroligist." the latest minor updates to photoshop and office v.X are free too. if apple were writing for a different OS, they would never give the i-spiel away for "free." as it is, they know they make money with them, and i think we have a right to critique them :)

[janey]

major or minor the only iApp that's not free is iDVD.

[PyroTurtle]

on my PowerBook i have over 32K songs worth of video game music....
and iTunes didn't like it till i put 1GB of ram...and with 10.2.3 it seemed to let me put unlimited in....so, i havne't foudn the cap yet...maybe it's just an odity with my comp or something....

[fixyourthinking]

Why don't you just edit it in Codewarrior?

I agree, there's probably a good reason it's limited to that. I doubt seriously it's arbitrary. I also agree with the post that said, "one might want to obtain a more professional app for a library like that".

I would venture to guess that >1/2 of 1% of ALL iTunes users have that size of a library. You can also create multiple libraries with software availible on versiontracker. - I see this a very "non complaint".

Here's a better statistic than the "7 iPods" analogy - that's the top 1000 songs for the past 32 years! Assuming some years had crappy top 1000 entries (Can anyone say, "I Wanna Sex You Up", by Color Me Badd?) - you'd have a library from the late 40's to 2003!

[iPengu]

that's the top 100 songs for the past 32 years
Uh. 32 x 100 is not 32000 dude.

And as for iTunes "not being free". Thats a load of bull *****. iTunes is 100% free.

Sure it comes bundled with the OS. But, it is also available for download, for FREE. Think about all the people still using OS9 who want a decent MP3 player. iTunes wasn't bundled with OS9. And as for apple making their money because people buy osx because of all the great software included for free, don't be so sure. It may surprise you to know that there are thousands, if not millions of places on the internet to get copies of every single peice of Apple software, for nothing. One might say, you can get it for *nix. Ha. I love it. Anyways. The point is. iTunes IS a free program. And more importantly. Sure you can complain because Apple's FREE software doesn't support more than 32000 songs, or you could either
a) put up with it
b) wait for a newer version, or
c) do something about it and use a different program.

[idkew]

Originally posted by LimeiBook86
who needs 140gb of music anyway, jeez, I have less than 300 megs of music and I have an iPod. Sure I can add more but adding CDs to an iPod takes forever. 10 seconds my ass...

why do you have an ipod with only 300 megs of songs? why?

getg some more music to make your purchase worth while.

[idkew]

Originally posted by iPengu

Uh. 32 x 100 is not 32000 dude.

And as for iTunes "not being free". Thats a load of bull *****. iTunes is 100% free.


there is no such thing as free. you PAID for it's development with your computer and os x. whether they charge you up front or not, it still is not free.

[rDLr]

Until the limit is extended you could use some shareware programs that enable you to have multiple iTunes libraries. There are two one version tracker called iTunes Library Tool and iTunes Library Manager.

[TyleRomeo]

Originally posted by JBytes


Actually, I have well over 3,000 CDs. I can tell you one thing though: it's a drag when you have to move. I stopped buying CDs when the record companies decided to go after Napter, and started calling us "thieves" for downloading MP3s.

--JBytes


well i recomend adding in your favorite CDs onto your mac right now and then wait for AAC encoding before you compress. Thats what im doing with my music. or if you can wait a few years were going to have TBs out there and there will be no reason to compress your music.

Tyler

[iJed]

Originally posted by alex_ant
Apple needs to move the iApps away from whatever kind of slow and limited flat-file database(s) they're using now and towards a real database like MySQL or something.

MySQL is hardly a "real database." Last I heard it didn't even support foreign keys.

[Stelliform]

Can you image the Apple developers. . . .

"Hey bob, how many MP3's should I allow in iTunes?"

"Uhhh I don't know! Make it really big. How bout 32k."

"Who in their right mind would need 32k?!?!"

"I don't know, but when someone hits it, I bet it will make MacRumors.com!"

[andrewlandry]

I think the reason people are so bummed about the 32,000 limit is because iTunes is so awesome in every other respect. I haven't reached 32,000 yet, but i probably will at some point. And the thing that really sucks about it is that iTunes has been good enough to keep any serious MP3 player competition out of the way. I've tried all of the competitors, and they seem okay - but nothing really matches the interface of iTunes on any platform that I've seen. I don't think that iTunes have limitations that stop people with large collections from enjoying it. If you remember the TV commercials for iTunes, they featured actually cool musicians. Apple's fan base is definitely populated by lots of serious music fans, and I think they should address this issue in a future update.

[fragilehero]

32,000 songs, about $40k worth of music. That's a very expensive hobby, (or at least it soon will be since you posted on macrumors). Thats interesting to note that Itunes for Mac OS X has a limit.

[GPTurismo]

Personally, itunes is fine. I have bose speakers and Sennheiser headphones I run the music through and it sounds great. I usually don't rip anything over 192 since 99% of all cd's aren't over 160 unless they are Singles. The only time I have had any problems is with some classical songs that have a lot of symbols and a lot of range, and ripping at a constant 256 is fine.

It sounds good, and even lame I haven't noticed a difference, and I jsut like iTunes interface. very simple and clean.

Plus, Super CD and ADVD is a waste of money and a trick for us to buy heavily encrypted music.

I had a friend who is an audio fiend praise for the fact that he could here the wisp of of the symbols in some classical music on his Super CDs. Yay, I want to here musicians breathe in my music more than I already can ;)

VIVA MP3!!!!

[harmless]

The 32000 entries is a limit of the Carbon Listmanager. (It uses the 'short' datatype for the number of rows.)

So I suppose it has nothing to do with the database itself.

Maybe Apple will move to a Cocoa based UI sometime; that would overcome this limitation.


bye. Andreas.

[LeafyGreens]

Originally posted by Macrumors
Just for interest... assuming an average song length of 4MB... 32000 MP3s would take up appoximately 128,000 MBs of storage, and would require seven 20GB iPods to hold all the songs.

Or four 40GB iPods... ;)

[bikertwin]

Originally posted by GPTurismo
I usually don't rip anything over 192 since 99% of all cd's aren't over 160 unless they are Singles. The only time I have had any problems is with some classical songs that have a lot of symbols and a lot of range, and ripping at a constant 256 is fine.

VBR or CBR? I import at 160 k VBR, joint stereo, and that seems to work really well and keep the file size down.

32,000 songs really is ridiculous. I'm sure s/he paid for all those and personally spent god-knows-how-many hours ripping each and every song.

Not.

No sympathy here.

[shadowfax]

i dunno, i would imagine you could get much of that music for free online (not everyone charges out the arse for their art), and from used CDs, and so on... of course, he probably did cheat, but i wouldn't say that 32000 songs = $40k just like that. that's if you pay 16 dollars for every CD you ever buy.

[janey]

Originally posted by fragilehero
32,000 songs, about $40k worth of music. That's a very expensive hobby, (or at least it soon will be since you posted on macrumors). Thats interesting to note that Itunes for Mac OS X has a limit.
not true i have more than twice that much music and the most i probably spent to get the CDs isn't even enough to buy a comp.

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by übergeek

not true i have more than twice that much music and the most i probably spent to get the CDs isn't even enough to buy a comp.

how? do you spend 10 cents a CD or what? at an average of 12 tracks per CD, that's about 5300 CDs you have, so you would have to average less than, what, .40$ a CD to have spent less than the value of a computer on your CD collection...

[kwajo.com]

I noticed somewhere somebody mentioned that iTunes is not altivec enhanced for playback, and was wondering if someone could tell me what player would be, or if this statement was even true to begin with

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by kwajo.com
I noticed somewhere somebody mentioned that iTunes is not altivec enhanced for playback, and was wondering if someone could tell me what player would be, or if this statement was even true to begin with

personally, i'd be surprised if it was, though that's not based on any real knowledge. there's nothing inherent in an mp3 that makes it work better under G4, but i couldn't tell you about apple's own decoder.

[bigizzy]

Originally posted by iJed
MySQL is hardly a "real database." Last I heard it didn't even support foreign keys.


You are right about that. Also for desktop apps like iApps it makes more sense to have a embedded database. There are many good commercial embedded object databases which apple can consider for this or they could go about building their own.

[reflex]

Originally posted by JBytes
and started calling us "thieves" for downloading MP3s.

They wouldn't be completely incorrect, would they now ?

[gopher]

http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunes.html

[peterjhill]

Originally posted by iJed
MySQL is hardly a "real database." Last I heard it didn't even support foreign keys.

It is a hell of alot cheaper than Oracle. It is not vulnerable to MS SQL worms. I am not sure about its pros and cons, but I do know that my officemate has written a few cool apps that rely on mySQL for a database:

http://www.net.cmu.edu/netreg/

It is a web app that allows any user on campus to register their computer's mac address, get a static (or dynamic) ip address. Pick their own hostname, write out dns and dhcp config files, maintain ddns zone files. mySQL works quite well with this function.

If Apple wanted to use mySQL as a database for some feature, why would they care about foreign keys anyway?

[Qball]

Originally posted by MacFan25
I just have CDs in my iTunes for now. Is there a Kazaa for Mac or anything like that?

Limewire, Acquisition, or iSwipe? Any opinions on the best program here? I hear it's Acquisition.

[Capt. Obvious]

Originally posted by GPTurismo
I usually don't rip anything over 192 since 99% of all cd's aren't over 160....
You should get together w/ Han Solo - HE did the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.... :rolleyes:

[DannyZR2]

I agree with what she said!

[Compufix]

Hey, I have 6 gigs of music....1400 songs, all my own CD's...I spent hours ripping them, tagging old ones I didn't tag originally, and organizing them.....I have a favorites playlist of about 200 plus songs...and I just installed a new car stereo with an MP# player input that I use my iPod with. All works and sounds great, EXCEPT my car just died 8-(.

[andrewlandry]

someone asked which is the best filesharing program for Mac. it is Acquisition. you can get it at Versiontracker and probably other places too. it's nice not to have to put up with the slowness and crashiness of Limewire anymore.

[contempt]

I just checked the number of songs in my iTunes: 27,133 songs; 99.4 days; 158.73GB!

Just 5k more to go before I hit that limit!!!

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by contempt
I just checked the number of songs in my iTunes: 27,133 songs; 99.4 days; 158.73GB!

Just 5k more to go before I hit that limit!!!

wow. are they legal? how many total albums is that (assuming they are all your own full ripped CDs)?

[jettredmont]

Okay, "32000" comes from using a short-indexed list (max for a signed short is 32,768; some implementations of such lists might "cap" themselves at 32000 just for an easier-to-remember number in the docs).

Why not an "unsigned" index? Generally signed values are used when the list is not likely to expand beyond the signed-16-bit limit in any case, thus allowing a programmer to use the 16th bit (the sign) as an error flag (ie, return -1 on error instead of an index in the array, etc). There are certainly different ways to do this (most obviously use a separate field altogether for the error indicator), but the signed-bit error indicator is the most efficient design pattern by far. And though it cuts the overall list max size in half (from 64k to 32k), when your design parameters don't even touch 32k it is wholly acceptible to trade unused capacity for efficiency.

Why not a larger (32-bit) int instead of 16 bit signed shorts? Because (1), again, 32000 is one hell of a lot of songs - far more than iTunes was designed to handle - and such a limitation is thoroughly understandable in a consumer music library app, and (2) a larger index inflates the memory usage requirements of the application and slightly complicates the API, which in turn makes the app slower and more memory-intensive for the 99% of us who don't have or even want 32,000+ songs in our libraries.

Why not a database? Because that's pure overkill. iTunes can keep a lot of its information in memory (another reason to have hard limits on library size), with little-to-no overhead as one would see with a database back-end. Granted, there are also arguments for a database, including allowing other apps to see the iTunes information (the xml file is fairly easy to parse if you need to, though it assumes an order-preserving XML parser which isn't exactly standard-compliant although almost all XML parser libraries are order-preserving), but a database-backed client application is an order of magnitude more complicated to design and implement than one that can hold the vast majority of its book-keeping data in-memory at all times.

Finally, someone said that it would be "easy" to just use unsigned 32-bit ints instead. Well, no. See the arguments above as for why you wouldn't want to do that in the first place, and then consider that the cost of moving to a wider index now is quite expensive. You would likely have to use different underlying list classes, and any place where you are holding an in-memory index (32000 bytes isn't a lot of memory to just hold in RAM) you now have to reconsider (because 2GB of memory is!). This is far from "simple" This is a redesign and rewrite of the data management code.

People. Cars aren't designed to operate at 500MPH because design involves compromises (and I doubt most of us would really enjoy taking the kids to school strapped on the spoiler of an F1 racer, right?) Design is, by its nature, a study of compromises. iTunes is not designed to operate on 15 billion songs. That design imperative extends from the UI paradigms involved (playlists and such are a poor interface for mega-libraries of music) to the underlying data structures (what we are seeing here most likely). If you need more than 32000 songs then you should purchase a product designed for that, and recognize that its interface will likely be quite different from that of iTunes. iTunes is designed to be easy-to-use, clean, and fairly efficient for managing and playing a consumer-sized library of songs (yes, more like 1000-5000 songs max than 32000).

For a 1-5k library managing system, iTunes appears quite well designed. It has a significant (~10x) growth room for 95+% of us, while retaining the most efficient underlying methods possible.

For the record, my iTunes library is 1115 songs, of which I'd sideline (burn MP3s to CD or DVD and archive them) probably 300-400 if space were ever needed. My library takes 5.28GB on disk, ~4.74MB/song, which would put 32000 songs at about 152 GB. I definitely won't be allocating that much hard drive space to iTunes in the semi-near-term future either.

[unclepain]

so this is the guy that cost the record industry 9 billion dollars last year!

[reiggin]

Originally posted by DavPeanut
Limewire

Limewire sucks. Acquisition rocks.

[SoonToGetAMac]

Originally posted by unclepain
so this is the guy that cost the record industry 9 billion dollars last year!


haha! :D , i was thinking the same thing.

[grimmace]

Ummm... I'd like to borrow his/her hard drive for a little while. :D That is a LOT of music! Sounds like they have their own record store.

[Wry Cooter]

Originally posted by unclepain
so this is the guy that cost the record industry 9 billion dollars last year!

I would gather the great majority of people that have over 1000 CDs worth of music, bought every one of those CDs. It isn't like it is 40,000 bucks worth either, to have 32000 songs... maybe a dollar a song if you figure an average of 15 to 16 cuts a CD for that same number portraits of washington. A lot of CDS have 20 or more songs.

I am one of those that could hit 32000 songs rather easily... I'm at 85 gigs 22000 songs at the moment, halfway through my collection of CDs... I just got tired of ripping them a while back.

But has anyone taken a gander at the KB article on getting over the limit? I'm not sure I can parse those directions.. see if you can figure it out, if you haven't looked at the solution yet...

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61585

Whats happening? Is it merely giving you three different libraries you have to choose among, or a unified searchable database or what?

[Billicus]

Originally posted by Wry Cooter
I would gather the great majority of people that have over 1000 CDs worth of music, bought every one of those CDs. It isn't like it is 40,000 bucks worth either, to have 32000 songs... maybe a dollar a song if you figure an average of 15 to 16 cuts a CD for that same number portraits of washington. A lot of CDS have 20 or more songs.

I am one of those that could hit 32000 songs rather easily... I'm at 85 gigs 22000 songs at the moment, halfway through my collection of CDs... I just got tired of ripping them a while back.

But has anyone taken a gander at the KB article on getting over the limit? I'm not sure I can parse those directions.. see if you can figure it out, if you haven't looked at the solution yet...

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61585

Whats happening? Is it merely giving you three different libraries you have to choose among, or a unified searchable database or what?

That's the most confusing thing I have ever read.:rolleyes:

[coolbreeze]

Originally posted by Billicus
That's the most confusing thing I have ever read.:rolleyes:
Yep. Agreed. Is it just me and Billicus, or is this post really confusing?

[jettredmont]

Originally posted by Billicus
That's the most confusing thing I have ever read.:rolleyes:

Confusing: Billicus' post, or the AppleCare workaround to 32000 file limit in iTunes?

The AppleCare workaround would be fairly easy to script in AppleScript ... kind of surprised they don't already have a script available to do it. On the other hand, it's still a rather clunky way of handling a library (partitioning it), and I still believe that if you have that many music files that you want ready and available at all times then you should use something besides iTunes to do it. iTunes is obviously not designed with million-song collections in mind!

[reflex]

Originally posted by Wry Cooter
I would gather the great majority of people that have over 1000 CDs worth of music, bought every one of those CDs. It isn't like it is 40,000 bucks worth either, to have 32000 songs... maybe a dollar a song if you figure an average of 15 to 16 cuts a CD for that same number portraits of washington. A lot of CDS have 20 or more songs.

And a lot of cd's have about 10-11 songs.

Let's assume an average of 16 songs per cd (for the sake of argument) and that the cd as such exists for 20 years (I don't know exactly how long it exists).

Given those figures, you'd need to buy about 100 cd's each year to get a collection of 32000 songs. I'm not saying people don't buy that many, I don't know about that. But I don't buy that many cd's by far.

If you assume an average of about 12 songs per cd (more realistic I think), you'd come out on about 133 cd's each year. That's a lot.

[Billicus]

Originally posted by coolbreeze
Yep. Agreed. Is it just me and Billicus, or is this post really confusing?

The Apple KB article is the most confusing thing I've ever read. I tend to agree. If you have 32,000 + song collection, then you need to find other means of using the songs. That, however, doesn't mean that Apple shouldn't address this limitation.

[Wry Cooter]

Originally posted by reflex
And a lot of cd's have about 10-11 songs.

Let's assume an average of 16 songs per cd (for the sake of argument) and that the cd as such exists for 20 years (I don't know exactly how long it exists).

Given those figures, you'd need to buy about 100 cd's each year to get a collection of 32000 songs. I'm not saying people don't buy that many, I don't know about that. But I don't buy that many cd's by far.

If you assume an average of about 12 songs per cd (more realistic I think), you'd come out on about 133 cd's each year. That's a lot.

Your sake of argument assumption may be closer to reality. Right now my library averages at 15.4 songs per CD
21536 songs ÷ 1397 albums =15.476 per CD comprising 84 gig at 160 kbps. I would have guessed more songs per disc merely because most artists in my collection take advantage of not being limited to 45 minute chunks of tape or vinyl and give an hours worth.
I have at least another wall unit of 500 CDs to add. I may or may not hit that 32000 song wall, but it will make me reconsider how I will build that next partition, I may have to segregate by musical style, which I really do not wish to do. Maybe between the next OS update and the next iTunes update, the file limit can be addressed.

I think of a five gig iPod as 80 CDs worth (thats 12.5 songs per CD if only 1000 songs were being represented on an iPod, but I usually always get 1100 or so on a five gig iPod. For some people that is more than their entire collection and nothing wrong with that. And many people have 200 or less CDs simply because they get rid of the ones they don't have space for. iTunes and iPod beat the heck out of Jewel Cases though.
-
Oh and 2000 CDs divided by 20 years is more like 100 a year, if that makes a difference. A 33 CD per year difference is a lot too. I don't think I bought any CDs until 1985. the selection was rather limited.

[SoonToGetAMac]

This limitation was known way back with iTunes 1.0, according to a review I found today.

[Nipsy]

I could swear that I had more than 32,000, as I'm currently at 31920, and did some housecleaning a week or two ago.

BTW, punk rock albums rountinely have 20+ songs per cd, and indie labels are a lot more liberal about distributing MP3.

I'm going to a record release on Tues, and should have enough new music to break 32k.

I may even try it with some unfiled songs right now.

I'll let you all know...

[Nipsy]

Now I'm pissed....32k is plenty for most, but for a musician, a collector, etc. it just won't do.

[robotrenegade]

wow a lot of songs

[Talon1138]

How about this little cool extra for ichat version 2:

you can automatically stream whatever you are listening to on itunes to whomever you are chatting to. be on the same wavelength. of course it would work best on fast connections, but so would video/audio chat.

[melchior]

wow talon, imagine beowulf cluster of those

[NavyIntel007]

Dude, I thought I was a big man when I had over 600 songs in my library. Now that my manhood's threatened, I'm going to go back to all my cds and encode the songs I really don't like. Point being, there is no possibly way that this person actually enjoys listening to 32000 songs. I agree with whoever said that the guy had 32000 one second clips. His purpose was to find the limit of the number of songs iTunes supports. Not only that but 32000 5 minute songs is around 267 hours or 12 days of music.

[JGowan]

I just did a little math and I think the person who started this thread with his experience with 32,000 is bogus.

1) 32,000 songs is probably about 3,200 CDs...

2) If a person worked really hard and pushed his mac very hard, he might could rip, let's say, 10 CDs an hour and could devote, let's say, 3 hours each day -- that's only 30 CDs a day.

If kept this pace up, he most likely would burn out a drive or two... but let's say he didn't...

3) 3,200 CDs divided by 30 CDs ripped a day equals roughly 107 DAYS (over 15 weeks)-- just to rip all the music.

I think 30-a-day would rough to keep up with... you would have to be very committed to keep this pace up. I've ripped a couple of dozen CDs several times in the past... it is a pain in the butt to constantly be loading and unloading CDs. I think if I was given the task of 3200 CDs, I could probably do it in a 6 month time period. Maybe.

It's do-able, but I don't buy it.

My 2¢.

[melchior]

itunes has been available for several years, remember.

it is a lot of hard disk space though. unless they are samples....

[Nipsy]

Originally posted by JGowan
I just did a little math and I think the person who started this thread with his experience with 32,000 is bogus.

1) 32,000 songs is probably about 3,200 CDs...

2) If a person worked really hard and pushed his mac very hard, he might could rip, let's say, 10 CDs an hour and could devote, let's say, 3 hours each day -- that's only 30 CDs a day.

If kept this pace up, he most likely would burn out a drive or two... but let's say he didn't...

3) 3,200 CDs divided by 30 CDs ripped a day equals roughly 107 DAYS (over 15 weeks)-- just to rip all the music.

I think 30-a-day would rough to keep up with... you would have to be very committed to keep this pace up. I've ripped a couple of dozen CDs several times in the past... it is a pain in the butt to constantly be loading and unloading CDs. I think if I was given the task of 3200 CDs, I could probably do it in a 6 month time period. Maybe.

It's do-able, but I don't buy it.

My 2¢.

Going in order:
1. More like 2000. Very few CDs have only 10 songs, and many of the CDs I have have 20+. The seem to average about 15. I even have one (Short Music For Short People) which has 101 30 second songs.

2. If that same person went to work with a wallet full of 72 CDs, and worked normally, swapping CDs as iTunes spit them out, the could do about 50 CDs a day without noticing.

3. Based on my estimate of 2000 CDs, that's 40 workdays, or 2 months. Of course, this is only for those starting from scratch...

And of course:


http://homepage.mac.com/chrismenke/images/Picture2.jpg

[Wry Cooter]

Indeed, it really isn't difficult to amass, own, or rip 2000 CDs. Yes ripping can be time consuming, especially for the ones you have to title yourself (if you have that many, chances are good you will occasionally find one or more no one else has submitted to CDDB), but as has been mentioned, you are doing other things during that rip time... you only have to swap them out every few minutes.

And the thing is, even if you disbelief is based on your owning only 60 CDs, and see no humanly possible way to own more... chances are still excellent you own more than one CD that the people with 2000 plus do not have at all. TCDWIAVBP.

[melchior]

i find lots of cd's have not been sudmitted to either opendb or gracenote.

which sucks, entering titles manually. i guess i have quite a few foreign cd's though, still from major labels....

[JGowan]

MUMFORD:

I humbly stand corrected.

BTW... my thoughts were that, although 32,000 was do-able, it wasn't likely. Of course, I see by your screenshot, I was incorrect in my assumption.

FYI, I've got about 33GBs of music & audio mp3s and, up till now, have thought I had a pretty big collection. Boy was I wrong.

115.61GBs of stuff! That's pretty amazing.

You better write back and tell me you have this stuff backed up on another drive. I won't be able to sleep at night knowing that you might lose it all with an ill-fated crash!

Officially taking my 2¢ off the table,
iJim

[Nipsy]

Originally posted by JGowan


You better write back and tell me you have this stuff backed up on another drive. I won't be able to sleep at night knowing that you might lose it all with an ill-fated crash!

Officially taking my 2¢ off the table,
iJim

It's backed up on my hacked 120GB HP DE100C stereo component MP3 player:
http://images.bestbuy.com/HomeAudioVideo/Vendor/HP/HPprodshot.jpg
As well as on MP3 CD.

The backup size is making me contemplate a A05 DVD burner though...

[JGowan]

Originally posted by NavyIntel007
... 32000 5 minute songs is around 267 hours or 12 days of music. Your calculations are way off. Unless you live on PLUTO, or something...

32,000 songs X 5 earth minutes = 160,000 earth minutes (2,666 earth Hours)

60 earth minutes x 24 earth hours (1 earth Day) = 1,440 minutes per Earth Day

160,000 / by 1,400 = 111 earth Days of Music (or roughly 3.5 earth months of music!)

But, your point is even more WELL UNDERSTOOD with the correct CALCs: how this guy can enjoy even a small portion of his music is beyond me. Sounds like collecting for the sake of collecting.

iJim
Planet Earth

[JGowan]

Just playin', Big Guy!

[billyboy]

I got to 1000 songs and 4.5GBs of disk space used and thought, sod that. I have imported loads of CDs accumulated on my travels, but at times I think a lot of the stuff I own is crap, and it grieves me that I paid so much money on the basis of a few good tracks only. So I'm glad I dont have 32000 tracks because 30000 would never be played.

In order to broaden my musical horizons and not clog up my hard drive, I have loaded streaming links to new promo music on the likes of MP3.com where artists are open-minded enough to air their music for free.

I have links to a batch of 330 full length songs/20 hours , with iTunes access to a whole new unknown world of blues and reggae, which I can review good and proper with 0kb taken up on my hard drive.

The sound quality is good, occasionally a stream doesnt kick in straightaway, maybe all the streams will eventually be cut, I dont know, but it suits me. There seems to be enough brilliant music perpetually coming out from unknown bands to keep my foot tapping, so I do not feel the need to cross the moral line and download and copy their music. Having said that, when i have paid off the PB I will start off a 21st century music collection by downloading a paid for copy of a BB CHUNG KING AND THE BUDDHAHEADS blues cd.

[Nipsy]

For the record, I actively listen to about 5000 songs, sing along, enjoy them, etc.

Then I have 20000 that are others from the album, but not my faves.

Then I have about 2500 songs that are live or acoustic, or remixed versions, and 2500 that I don't listen to, but want there in case they get stuck in my head.

I don't like 'Who Let the Dogs Out', 'Ring My Bell, 'La Vida Loca', etc., but I'd rather have them around to clear my mind, than have it stuck them my head for days.

[scem0]

Originally posted by reiggin
Limewire sucks. Acquisition rocks.

that's a very broad thing to say. They both have their advantages
and disadvantages but if I had to choose one over the other I
would choose Limewire.

[wisner]

I have a bit over 16,000 MP3s - representing the entirety of my personal CD collection - and let me tell you: iTunes gets *slow*.

On my previous machine (500MHz G4) it was virtually unusable. Any change to the iTunes library (i.e., editing the meta-information for a song) would take several seconds. Searching was similarly sluggish.

On my current machine (1GHz) iTunes still slows down quite noticeably with a library this large, but it does at least remain bearable.

As for Limewire vs. Acquisition: Acquisition's UI kicks Limewire's ass from here to Sunday and back, but Acquisition falls down in a big way in the features department. (Example that comes to mind: it does not give you the ability to configure a NAT gateway IP address, making it impossible to share files from behind a residential gateway device.) And since Acquisition actually uses Limewire's engine, it's not Java-free as people think.

[zac4mac]

Not near the limit yet, but my Library is at 12,256 songs, from 74 genres, 513 artists, 1047 albums. 78.58GB/40.5 DAYS

I'm really sick of listening to micro-brains screaming at me to buy their crap on radio and TV. I set iTunes on Random and let it rip. I might get Widespread Panic, Bach, Cake, the Beatles or any of 500+ others. I very rarely "fast forward" thru a song. I make an exception for Atari Teenage Riot. I only keep it for shock value - the only entry in the genre Noise.

I'm in the process of moving, hope to get set up at my new place to start digitizing my old Vinyl - 500+ albums from the 50s-80's.

Aural Therapy works almost as well as firing up the Harley and headin' for the Mountains.

Zack

[cspace]

anyone know if iTunes 4 fixes this?

[Wry Cooter]

Originally posted by cspace
anyone know if iTunes 4 fixes this?

I haven't gone over the limit yet. Apple did mention a earlier workaround (in this thread somewhere?) not sure how elegant the workaround is.

But at its core, I think the max number of files issue may be an OS X issue, and it may need the next OS upgrade and file journaling tweaks to fix. Or maybe it isn't and its merely a matter of what iTunes itself can parse at once.

[gnsr]

I would like to add a figure: 32000 songs at an average of 4 minutes a song is about 3 months, 24 hours a day, or a whole year about 6 hours a day. It quite a lot of time and i think its somewhat dificult to remember all these songs. Unless we are talking about 500 classic musics performed by 64 different orchestras ;)

[Wry Cooter]

Originally posted by gnsr
I would like to add a figure: 32000 songs at an average of 4 minutes a song is about 3 months, 24 hours a day, or a whole year about 6 hours a day. It quite a lot of time and i think its somewhat dificult to remember all these songs. Unless we are talking about 500 classic musics performed by 64 different orchestras ;)

If you could remember them, why would you want a recording?

Actually I think you underestimate the capacity of the human brain to recall and recognize music. Music is probably among one of the better memory aids there is.