Filed under: Cult of Mac, iTunes
World's Largest iTunes Library?
Glen Wolsey has an interview up with Will Friedwald, the self-proclaimed owner of the world's largest iTunes collection, which he has even given a name: "The Matrix." Friedwald is apparently a music writer for the New York Sun, and his main library contains over 170,000 tracks (849GB). He also has a couple of "sub-libraries," which, if all added together, would bring the total to around 1200GB. The two iTunes database files on the main library are themselves each over 250MB. Unsurprisingly, Friedwald claims that iTunes is very slow when running his 800GB library on a single processor Power Mac G5, taking up to three or four minutes to bring the "Get Info" window up on a selected track. So this got me wondering. What kind of iTunes library do you have, dear TUAW reader? Can you challenge Mr. Friedwald?(My main library is a measly 21.5GB).
[Via macitt]
Update: Clearly Will Friedwald has nothing on TUAW readers. Several of them, in the comments below, seem to have larger libraries than Friedwald.
Get a WordPress.com Blog
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 6)
Matt said 2:23PM on 4-21-2007
263 songs; 1.38 GB
It's small, but with good reason -- Just the songs I love the most.
Reply
Adam said 2:37PM on 4-21-2007
38GB
Reply
Trausti said 2:13PM on 4-21-2007
48.74gb here. Tiny compared to 800 :P
Reply
narco said 2:09PM on 4-21-2007
Damn, I only have 28,339 at the moment, which is a little bit under 100GB. All of my tracks are 128/AAC since I can't tell the difference, but I made sure to transfer all of my remastered Cure tracks at 192.
i could have more if i transfered the rest of my vinyl and CDs, but being that it takes 3-4 minutes to bring up the get info screen, i'll pass. but damn, i can't imagine tagging all those tracks! i'm still tagging tracks i imported from the mid 90's.
Fishes,
narco.
Reply
Mac Fan 17 said 2:21PM on 4-21-2007
He he ive only got 705.8 MB... he he
Reply
JonECat said 2:22PM on 4-21-2007
30.24 GB
Reply
Panathas17 said 2:25PM on 4-21-2007
And to think i only like about 264.4 MB of it..... he he
Reply
Andy said 4:40AM on 4-22-2007
10.26GB excluding TV Shows & Movies. With TV Shows and Movies it's about 50GB but I don't have most of them on anymore. Burnt them to DVDs for backup and removed them.
Reply
max cascone said 2:28PM on 4-21-2007
my roommate and i combined our libraries into one monster 240+ GB archive (and growing). Most tracks are at least 192 mp3, with a significant portion at 320 mp3. One of my low-priority projects is to re-rip my fave stuff into Apple Lossless. My old 400 MHz G4 tower acts as the iTunes server, transmitting to an Airport Express connected to my main surround system. I have a VNC server running on the G4 for those times when we're too lazy to get off the couch and happen to have our laptops near us. Even though the library is so large, it's still very usable on the 400 G4. It's slow, but the "get info window delay" is nowhere near as bad as the people above have mentioned... they must be doing something wrong. Maybe they need to Consolidate their libraries; having the files spread out all over the place could lead to the performance problems they're having. We just have everything on a 320GB external firewire drive.
Reply
Mike said 2:28PM on 4-21-2007
4650 songs / 46.5 GB (I use 320 AAC).
Reply
Panathas17 said 2:28PM on 4-21-2007
Just FYI Mac Fan 17 IS Panathas17
Reply
Aryo Sayogha said 2:46PM on 4-21-2007
110 GB on my PC and another 10 on my iBook. All properly tagged ;)
Reply
bob barker said 2:32PM on 4-21-2007
1570 songs -- 7.52 GB
17 movies -- 20.53 GB
Reply
Fernando said 2:33PM on 4-21-2007
16,66gb 3226 items
Reply
matthew said 2:35PM on 4-21-2007
338.87 GBs
Reply
Explain It To Me said 2:39PM on 4-21-2007
14,092 songs, 44.2 days, 57.23GB of MP4s
Reply
Dan Arel said 2:41PM on 4-21-2007
i am close to about 50GB or so, all on an external 160GB LaCie drive.
Reply
Johnny said 2:44PM on 4-21-2007
I know a guy with 1.5 TB of mp3s and another with 2.1 TB. I highly doubt they put any of them into iTunes, though.
Reply
Jon said 2:44PM on 4-21-2007
I have 7624 songs, which take up 30.09 GB. Most of them are iTunes purchases at 128 AAC and about 200 are CD rips at about 192, with around 200 being 128 "downloads" that I couldn't get anywhere else ;)
I don't have any movies or TV shows, only music videos that came with albums. I may change this policy when a full screen iPod comes out.
Reply
Matt said 2:46PM on 4-21-2007
Mine is just under 100 GB, 16,356 songs and a handful of movies and TV shows. The biggest chunk of that came from my own CDs; I had nearly 800 before iTunes came along and I shipped them off to a ripping service to do the heavy lifting. I don't expect it to keep growing as fast though. It's weird, since music buying became so much easier with iTunes, my interest dropped off and I buy much less these days.
Reply