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someone28624

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 15, 2007
849
11
Buffalo
Watching the keynote for the first iPod- 1000 songs in your pocket- Steve Jobs says that 1000 songs will be most people's whole music collection. Mine is now 2216 songs big, and that's fairly tame compared to some of the music collections I've heard of. I don't know anyone who's collection is under 1000 songs.

So was that really how big most people's collections were then? What made is change?
 

NeoMayhem

macrumors 6502a
Aug 22, 2003
916
1
-Bigger Hard Drives
-Faster Internet Connections
-BitTorrent
-Amazon/iTMS
-Faster CPUs for importing CDs quickly
 

donga

macrumors 6502a
May 16, 2005
841
1
AZ
it just makes sense that people start accumulating more and more stuff over time. in this case music.

before digital, people collected tapes and CDs. they started off with the first ones, and then added more and more as their interests developed and disposable income grew
 

mariokarter

macrumors member
Sep 16, 2007
44
0
i think if anything ipods have made collections are smaller. All the less than full sized ipods have encouraged people to cram their collections into a mere 4 gigs and stop collecting because of all the gimmicky features.

But when the 240 gig ipods come out thats gonna be sick.


now the internet...thats certainly made peoples collections bigger.
 

juswest

macrumors regular
Jul 30, 2008
175
8
i think if anything ipods have made collections are smaller. All the less than full sized ipods have encouraged people to cram their collections into a mere 4 gigs and stop collecting because of all the gimmicky features.

But when the 240 gig ipods come out thats gonna be sick.


now the internet...thats certainly made peoples collections bigger.

Nope I knew people with the 2 gig nano's and when I would say don't you need more room they would say naw...I don't have that many songs to justify the 30 gig ipod video..same thing with 4 and 8 gigs. Truth is some people just have the music they're currently listening to. not everything they think of. I didn't understand it at first as a person with over 40 gigs of music but hey some people just don't have that many songs and don't care to.
 

jodelli

macrumors 65816
Jan 6, 2008
1,219
4
Windsor, ON, Canada
The iPod hasn't affected my numbers at all. But iTunes specifically and the internet in general have caused an increase to my music collection.
 

Sayer

macrumors 6502a
Jan 4, 2002
981
0
Austin, TX
No.

My friend had hundreds of CDs and 10x as many tapes/records, in the early 90's

It does make it easier to take a large collection *with* you and that was what the difference was (as opposed to lugging CD cases or burning your own CDs and lugging those).
 

bembol

macrumors 65816
Jul 29, 2006
1,058
51
Music, no. I'm just at 6.5GB.

iPod did changed my Movies/TV Shows that I had to buy an External HDD, first time I buying one.
 

Scepticalscribe

macrumors Ivy Bridge
Jul 29, 2008
63,834
46,282
In a coffee shop.
No.

My friend had hundreds of CDs and 10x as many tapes/records, in the early 90's

It does make it easier to take a large collection *with* you and that was what the difference was (as opposed to lugging CD cases or burning your own CDs and lugging those).

Exactly. People who love music have always had large collections, - I have had hundreds of CDs, and before that, shelves and shelves of vinyl, and (sometimes) cutting-edge systems on which to play it. The development of the iPod simply allows these people to transport all (or much/most) of their collection with them at the one time.
Cheers
 

arkitect

macrumors 604
Sep 5, 2005
7,047
12,032
Bath, United Kingdom
Has the iPod caused people to have bigger music collections?

Speaking for myself, I started way back in the 70s… stacks of vinyl. 100s of them.
Then moved on to CDs… 1,000s of them before iTunes was even a twinkle in Steve Jobs' eye.

iPods have had no influence on the size of my music collection.

But:
iPods and iTunes have vastly increased the accessibility and portability.
 

OldLadywithiPod

macrumors member
Sep 17, 2008
48
0
Oh, a large glass of wine + iTunes and Old Lady buys a lot of the singles she had on 45's in the 1970's . . . . (which I wouldn't have purchased without the wine/iTunes combo.)

So the answer is yes.
 

bright one

macrumors newbie
Dec 27, 2007
8
0
i'm with a few of the other posters here. Ipod hasn't changed the quantity of my music collection, but itunes, music/mp3 blogs, amazon, etc. have.

the ipod has caused me to whittle down the physical CDs i have, though. why keep hundreds of CDs on a shelf [or two or three] when you can put all the music on a hard drive and your ipod? the only CDs i am keeping are the two/three disc sets, the ones with really nice artwork, booklets, etc.

the ipod has, i think, caused me to rediscover a lot of music from my [1980s] youth, stuff that i had on CD and album and cassette and that i am now looking for as mp3s.
 

pointycollars

macrumors regular
May 15, 2007
196
0
Cincinnati
The size of the hard drive on my computer has been the limiting factor of my digital music collection. My old TiBook G4 had a 30-gig hard drive, so I always had to pare down my music collection to about 10 gigs. My MBP has a 200 gig, and now my music collection knows no bounds :)

Never had a gigantic iPod - my nano is 4 gigs - so I've never had my entire music collection on an iPod.
 

awr

macrumors member
Sep 25, 2007
49
0
yes and no

personally, i have always loved having music all around me. before the ipod even came out i had about 80GB of digital music on my PC ( i know, PC, i was doing alot of things wrong back then).

since then however, i have found itunes actually makes it more fun to have and collect music and other types of digital media. it is becuase of that, i think, that i enjoy collecting music now as much as i do.

as far as the ipod goes, since its introduction, they have never made one big enough for my music collection at that time. with that said, i don't know where i would be without my 2 ipods, i can't imagine popping in a CD and having to pop in a new one after 20 or so songs . . .
 

BoyBach

macrumors 68040
Feb 24, 2006
3,031
13
iTunes and the iPod has caused me to 'refine' my music collection, which resulted in me selling over 100 albums that I didn't play. Now I'm left with a library of music that I actually listen to!
 

Loge

macrumors 68030
Jun 24, 2004
2,821
1,310
England
iTunes has meant I have made some impulse buys that I would have been unlikely to make otherwise, as well as the availability of single tracks, where I would not have purchased a whole album. But no, this would not have been a signficant increase in my music collection.
 

MattZani

macrumors 68030
Apr 20, 2008
2,554
103
UK
Owning an iPod Has Made me think about music more (That, and growing up, im always listening to music now) I Used to own a few favourite albums on CD, and just think music was silly, now i have a 15Gb Collection of 3000 songs, but i dont think the iPod Changed that, really, i think its my MBP, when i had my PC, my iPod never synced well (USB 1.0) and im strapped for cash, but never torrented because of virus's etc, when i got my MBP, Torrenting all of a sudden seemed so good, my Library has more than doubled, since im just Torrenting Discographies :D God i Love Torrentz.
 

MagnusVonMagnum

macrumors 603
Jun 18, 2007
5,193
1,442
I had over 4000 songs after just importing all my CDs (around 375 CDs). I'm now at 5218 songs after adding some digital songs I already had plus buying some new ones and converting all my music videos over with hand-brake (about 100 converts plus a dozen I purchased from the iTunes store).

I've got a 16GB iPod Touch, but I use it more as a remote for my whole house audio system (two AppleTV units plus the computer's own THX speaker system in the den). I do occasionally use it as an iPod for trips, etc., though.

What I have just added, though is a JVC car stereo that has a front panel USB jack. I bought a micro 8GB USB drive from Smart Select for $28 (NewEgg.com) and filled that baby up (currently filled to 7.5 GB) with 50 full CDs plus a "Misc" folder with 230 songs I can use with Random play. That's using a 2nd iTunes converted library set to 256kbit AAC rate plus a few MP3s. You can make a playlist or whatever in iTunes and just drag them right over to the memory stick. The only issue I had is that it wouldn't transfer all 230 tracks with one drag on my Mac for some reason (not sure if it's an iTunes problem or a Mac OS X problem). It would do about 100 at a time, though. I did end up removing the '00' type numbers in front of the misc. folder names on the stick, though so that all those tracks would be ordered in alphabetical order. The numbers were useful for full CD folders so that the tracks played in the same order. I then backed up the memory stick's folders to a folder on the hard drive in case I need to wipe it for some reason (e.g. portable storage) and restore it later. I did purchase a 4GB stick (now down to $15) for that use, though, but you never know when you'll need more space.
 

Mr Kram

macrumors 68020
Oct 1, 2008
2,388
1,237
the growth of my collection has actually slowed since the inception of itunes and like concepts. in the past, i always bought whole albums or CD's. now i tend to buy mostly singles. even when i import from a cd, i usually only keep the "good" songs in my library.
 
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