thoughts about the iPod

[lauralh]

(or, why I only have a 1G mp3 player)

Let's estimate, if you are anal about quality, that you have 100MB per full album that you encode. So that's about 10 albums per gigabyte of hard disk space. The smallest iPods are now at 30G but started at 10. So that's between 100-300 albums at the low end. Average album is about 60 minutes, so let's say you can listen to your iPod all 16 hours of your waking day. You can't, of course, since you need to talk to people and shit, but let's just assume you can. Two hundred albums would take you close to two weeks to listen to. Let's try the more reasonable assumption that you only want to listen 8 hours a day, and we get the more reasonable 25 days, almost 4 weeks. Well, you get the idea.

Now for some people this is great and totally awesome, but I personally only listen to mp3s on my player typically on the way to and from work, no more than 2 hours a day. I figure this is when most people use theirs, or while walking/at the gym. So that's more like two albums a day. Or three months to get through your collection. But who wants to do that? If I like an album, I want to hear it at least once a week, right? Until I get tired of it and want to take it off my rotation. And I certainly know people who just listen to the same album or playlist over and over and over and over and over. Having more than 4G for these circumstances just seems like a hassle.

Comments

[skiplogic.livejournal.com]

managing a selection is the hassle, I just like having my entire music collection with me at all times. Of course this means either

A. Continually buying new ipods when my collection grows

or

B. purging unlistened songs from my collection from time to time

option b is just as annoying as managing a selection to carry, and a is just not financially attractive.

it's a dilemma.

[skipbreakfast.livejournal.com]

Do you not make playlists?

[skiplogic.livejournal.com]

not really, I usually browse by artist and album, and then if I want to listen to a mix set I just randomize the whole thing.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

B is fairly easy with iTunes.

[skiplogic.livejournal.com]

that's true, but itunes only keeps track of my listening habits on my computer, not both at the same time?

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

I thought the iPod kept track of what you listened to as well.

[skiplogic.livejournal.com]

it does, but it doesn't merge the statistics back into your itunes library. at least mine doesn't.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

you mean, when you hook it up and browse the iPod under itunes, it doesn't show what songs you've listened to?

[skiplogic.livejournal.com]

it only shows what i've listened to on the ipod, which may or may not be an accurate indication of whether or not i've listened to it lately and would like to hear it more.

[girlstyle.livejournal.com]

alternatively with iTunes, you can remove stuff from your iTunes library (and thusly from your iPod) without taking them off of your computer. That's how I'm solving this problem currently.

[skipbreakfast.livejournal.com]

They started at 5GB, actually. I own a 20GB iPod and I have yet to put more than 2GB on it.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

yeah but no one has one of those.

I never put much more than 5GB on mine and it was still unmanageable

[skipbreakfast.livejournal.com]

they don't have them anymore because the batteries have all failed in them by now.

[mcsnee.livejournal.com]

I've got the 60 GB one. I've just barely broken the 30GB mark, but I really like having the bulk of my collection on this device, and having plenty of room for lots of audiobooks. I use it most days at work, whenever I'm in the car, etc., and I like the ability to have an urge to hear something and just be able to scroll to it and listen instead of having to remember to put it on a playlist and resync it onto my player.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

heh. I only get urges to listen to music that I've been listening to.

[patrick.livejournal.com]

The iPod changed the way I listen to music. Before, I would sit at my computer and listen to albums. Now, I listen to albums, rate the music I am listening to, and use the ratings to dynamically create playlists of my favorite music.

A dynamically created personal radio station that brings me all the hits, all the time with no commericals!

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

not being able to install soulseek at work led me to weblogs which led me to the same thing

[chris.livejournal.com]

the advantage for me is situational music. there's new stuff that I listen to frequently, but I like variety. there's stuff I listen to in the morning and stuff I listen to on the way home, and stuff I will listen to in the car or at work. I just like having it all handy and not having to shuffle it around much depending on what I'm doing. and like, once every couple of months i'll still go listen to Daydream Nation or some old shit like that that I dont hear very often.

I've got an older 20 gig and i hover at around 16-17 gigs used on it. every once in a blue moon I'll look at stuff I have not ever listened to or dont listen to anymore and will remove it to make room, but I've probably only done that a handful of times since owning the thing.

[henry.livejournal.com]

yeah ditto

[langston.livejournal.com]

reloading and servicing the small Ipods could conceivably be very irritating and time consuming.

I've spent all my expendable income on women, drugs and bikes over the last year so I'm nearly the last man alive without an Ipod.

[andrewx.livejournal.com]

I like to have everything available to me at any given time without having to take the time to swap out tracks. That way I've got my whole collection available, say at a party when someone wants to hear a track I have, rather than just what I happen to be listening to that week. No "Yeah I've got that song at home, maybe next time I'll throw it on my MP3 or something..."

Plus, I just filled up 60G to the brim.

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

You summed up exactly how I feel about this.
I am more than happy with my 1G mp3 player.

[gikiski.livejournal.com]

Completely agree.

I've managed to develop several smart playlists that keep my music fresh, especially old favorites.

I have a Current playlist that keeps all my podcasts in line to listen to, but if they get too old unlistened, out they go. Yet, two hours of them can still be available, in order, for me to listen to the unlistened ones.

iTunes is the shiznit. Or whatever.

Additionally, storage is not [usually] the most limiting factor; battery life is.

[xaotica.livejournal.com]

i don't listen to music that way (a series of albums that i rotate through, or a playlist that i listen to over and over.)

i have issues with routine. when i commuted to work, i had to go a different way all the time, even though i'm terrible with directions, just because i would get irritated if i kept going the same way and felt confined.
when i get up in the morning, i don't do things in a specific order (ie eat breakfast > check email > wash face etc.) if i go to a restaurant, i have to order a different thing than what i got last time, even if it means eating something that i don't really like that much. there are distinct disadvantages to NOT following those kind of routines but for whatever reason i avoid them. so it's the same thing with music... even if i love a song/album/playlist etc, i generally don't keep it on rotation.

i do agree that most people who have an ipod with that much space probably don't use all of it for music though. but mine is continuously full :/
some people do use it for transporting files also. i did that at work for files which were big enough that it was faster to put them on a hard drive vs. emailing/ftp'ing them.

[bewing.livejournal.com]

I don't listen to complete albums either. Out of my 5GB of mp3s, I can pretty clearly identify 1.5GB as my "favorites" that I'd like to listen to, regularly.

I also make 14 hour drives down to Southern California, fairly regularly.

And I think that flash memory mp3 players are definitely a better technology than hard drive based players, like those iPods.

Put it all together, and this summer I'm going to be getting my first mp3 player, that I've been waiting years for -- a 2GB flash, solid state version. It should have enough battery life to last me an entire one way trip, with a different song the whole way. Then I'm going to have to mod my car stereo to make everything convenient -- with an appropriate power jack, maybe, and an input jack (which it doesn't have).

[stonecollector.livejournal.com]

60 gigs and i wholly intend for that shit to be full by the time i stop being a lazy asshat. at about 60% now, after owning my iaudio x5 for two months. there's enough room to have all the videos i want (all the battlestar galactica in the world, my favorite selections from the director's label series, clips of you cooking something special in the kitchen) in both their original format (so i can put the files wherever i want) and compressed to view on the player. storage of fucking proprietary apple files i'm too lazy to convert, but will be able to share with all of you douchebags that use itunes. i like completeness. i like being able to have everything with me always. i have journal articles on that thing, i have applications, i have pictures, i have the entire 18 hours of the ring cycle.
i almost always listen to it on random, and i rather enjoy my ritual of clicking a few times until 'the right' song comes on. but it also works very well if i'm not paying attention, because it's all my music, therefore i like it all and will generally enjoy whatever comes on. i don't usually use my mp3 player in shorter term situations like a bus ride or a walk to the store - my primary uses are for longer periods of time, like when i'm having a vision quest in the woods for a day, or when i'm doing construction in utah and i just need to zone out and make it through the 8 hours.

in other words, i can't have a tiny little 1-2 gig flash player because i'd totally lose it.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

:)

the other thing is I just have waaay too much music, so putting a third of it on an iPod always felt weird.