Largest iTunes library

[midwestfisherma]

Here's mine. All music.

[lsvtecjohn3]

Music: 5181 songs 31.13 GB
Movies: 325 721.06 GB
TV Shows: 868 561.56 GB

[KeithJenner]

Originally Posted by gnasher729

If you say "everybody" - sure. I would suspect that some people with enormous collections fall into the category "hunter and gatherer" who download everything they can lay their hands on, with the goal of creating a large collection, not listening to music.

But one CD ripped in ALAC is probably around 300-350 MB, so 1 TB is about 3,000 CDs in ALAC. Buying 2 CDs a week for 30 years gets you there. Easier if you are into classical music. Just checked on Amazon and found:

Bach complete, 157 CDs, £90.
Mozart complete, 170 CDs, £120.
Haydn almost complete, 150 CDs, £180.
Beethoven complete, 85 CDs, £70

and so on. That small list alone is about 550 CDs, about 200 GB in ALAC.

I bought my first CD in about 1985, and have been constantly buying since then. I have got some real bargains in that time as well, and have also bought a few thousand songs from eMusic, which have only cost a few pence per song. I'd imagine that I have spent between £20-30,000 on music over the years. It sounds a lot, but over that time it averages out to less per week that I would spend on a night down the pub.

Anyone who has been collecting music for decades could easily have a totally legal collection of tens of thousands of songs.

Of course, there are many people with large collections who have got them illegally, but the assumption that all large collections must be illegal is way off the mark.

[tann]

Ok, only put some of it into iTunes so far (most isn't tagged) but I have:
Movies: 216 films - 461gbs.
TV: 1311 Episodes - 470gbs.
Songs: 3029 songs - 26.78gbs - 8.3days.
Podcasts: 171 episodes - 6.6gbs.

All movies/TV are ripped from my dvd collection (which is quite small compared to some of you!!!).

Still got about 700gbs of unripped tv though. Ran out of room on my external so will hold off until I invest in some more.

[chucklesbtoken]

My brother has over 175,000 songs which is over a year. I forget the Gb amount but he is insane with the id3 tags..all complete withcorrect album art (jpeg even to save space) duplicates only when "original album" + "greatest hits"...best part ALL LEGAL! Damn itunes stole my brother!

[pmasters]

692.8 Gb here but I used to be a club and wedding DJ.

[\-V-/]

Originally Posted by chucklesbtoken

My brother has over 175,000 songs which is over a year. I forget the Gb amount but he is insane with the id3 tags..all complete withcorrect album art (jpeg even to save space) duplicates only when "original album" + "greatest hits"...best part ALL LEGAL! Damn itunes stole my brother!

I'd rather buy a house.

[Bilalo]

Originally Posted by Habitus

All right, who has the largest iTunes library?

I currently have 372GB...

Habitus

You cant really ask that question, I have 1.8 Terabytes of movies and series but only 25 GB of music... And I could just transfer them all and put them in my itunes library so you gotta be more specific and whether or not you bought them from Itunes store or what so ever.

[Mydrivec]

42k plus...all music. 268 GB worth. Movies I keep on my WHS which is about half full with 4.5 TB

[John Crichton]

117309 songs - 386.7 Days - 937.29GB

[AdamInNi]

Originally Posted by John Crichton

117309 songs - 386.7 Days - 937.29GB

Man fo' get you, mannn

Mine is only 4.21GB

[attackment]

[darcyjames]

Weighing in at 908GB

1080P Movies and TV are the (mountain) lion's share of it...

[Ianbolton]

I had a library of around 450gig. Got a new Mac the other day and decided to store it all externally. After the transfer I now, for some reason, have about 75% of my library duplicated and it's eaten up 700gig. That's not even including all my films, as I couldn't be bothered converting everything to iTunes recognised formats. Sorting this out is going to be a nightmare. Maybe I'll just use Spotify?

[sammich]

I think somewhere here I used Dashcode to mimic the font and menu style of the iTunes stat bar to make some fake stats. I posted it somewhere but I cannot find it.

I don't use iTunes for anything other than music (except apps) so I don't have movies in there.

Otherwise, that fake stat screenshot I made up would actually be far far below what it would be.

[Sweetfeld28]

Originally Posted by Ianbolton

I had a library of around 450gig. Got a new Mac the other day and decided to store it all externally. After the transfer I now, for some reason, have about 75% of my library duplicated and it's eaten up 700gig. That's not even including all my films, as I couldn't be bothered converting everything to iTunes recognised formats. Sorting this out is going to be a nightmare. Maybe I'll just use Spotify?

Have you thought about buying iTunes Match, then letting it do its thing for a day, then a couple days later downloading all the higher bit rated stuff to your new Mac?

I would delete the folder that has all the duplicates, and use iTunes Match instead personally. Plus, if you have a laptop like me with a smaller HD, then you can delete everything off of it, and just stream your library.

[Ianbolton]

Originally Posted by Sweetfeld28

Have you thought about buying iTunes Match, then letting it do its thing for a day, then a couple days later downloading all the higher bit rated stuff to your new Mac?

I would delete the folder that has all the duplicates, and use iTunes Match instead personally. Plus, if you have a laptop like me with a smaller HD, then you can delete everything off of it, and just stream your library.

Good idea actually. I'll look into it. Cheers

[LorenK]

I'm surprised this thread is still running with such paltry numbers. gb? Ha! If you're not in the tb range, you're not in the game. Approximately 3.1tb of music in iTunes, not including a few hundred gbs in FLACs, and a couple of tb in movies that I watch in VLC (does iTunes support 1080 yet?).

And yes I listen to lots of music of all sorts of genres, generally in shuffle, though the algorithm in iTunes is beginning to annoy me, it does tend to repeat patterns and will get stuck on a particular song if I have multiple versions by the same and other artists.

[AppleDApp]

Originally Posted by LorenK

I'm surprised this thread is still running with such paltry numbers. gb? Ha! If you're not in the tb range, you're not in the game. Approximately 3.1tb of music in iTunes, not including a few hundred gbs in FLACs, and a couple of tb in movies that I watch in VLC (does iTunes support 1080 yet?).

And yes I listen to lots of music of all sorts of genres, generally in shuffle, though the algorithm in iTunes is beginning to annoy me, it does tend to repeat patterns and will get stuck on a particular song if I have multiple versions by the same and other artists.

How do you manage all this?

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by iRooney

46 million songs? I call bs. Screenshot or it didn't happen.

That's more than Apple has...

One thing I'm curious about: The developers at Apple should have some insane amount of songs to be able to test iTunes with it. Just so that they can test what happens if you open a library with 100,000 songs, and if it all works without crashing.

[doomfront]

I've been cleaning and deleting music I don't listen to to downsize my library to try and get a new ipod touch. But I'm still over a 130 gigs.
20868 songs 135.36 gigs

[frankblundt]

Originally Posted by gnasher729

One thing I'm curious about: The developers at Apple should have some insane amount of songs to be able to test iTunes with it. Just so that they can test what happens if you open a library with 100,000 songs, and if it all works without crashing.

I don't think they do test it - the market is probably too limited. It's always been a dog for large libraries, although way better in the last few versions than iTunes 5-6 that crawled with 40k+ songs.

Not sure that I'm looking forward to the imminent new version as I fear it may dumb down to an iOS/ATV clone - large music libraries are bad enough but browsing large movie libraries on either of those platforms is currently hopeless.

[schmidt65]

Total itunes library file is 2.9TB

2.2TB Movies
120GB Music
500GB TV
1.3GB Books

and fair bit of 'Other'!

[mcaaron]

I have just gone through a second wave of deleting things I don't or won't listen to/watch/read and still have some things to add to iTunes (~200 gigs worth of Movies, TV Shows, and Audiobooks)...

Music:
Movies:
TV Shows:
Books & Audiobooks:

[SnowLeopard OSX]

Pretty much everything in this thread dwarfs my iTunes library. I manage it daily, though. I get rid of things I most likely won't be watching/listening to/looking at anymore.