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iTunes Tops Out At 32,000 Songs
Posted by
pudge
on Mon Feb 17, 2003 12:05 AM
from the mo-mp3s dept.
from the mo-mp3s dept.
usr122122121 writes "A Macintouch User has discovered that iTunes maxes out at 32,000 songs." I did test this myself (a one-liner perl script to give each file a unique artist/album/title), and it's apparently true. How much it matters is an exercise left to the reader.
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Don't worry, Apple's pretty good with updates (Score:5, Funny)
(Oops, 15 minutes. It took me a few to divide.)
Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
Well, at least the RIAA will be happy...
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
The magic fantasy world where all math works out easily in my head.
Parent
Re:Wow! (Score:2)
Re:Wow! (Score:3, Informative)
There are 4 members of the family, each of whom tends to buy ~ 2 cds a day. This has been going on for several (6 or 7) years now.
You should see their sound system(s)!
Re:Wow! (Score:2)
And also that most CDs don't have 15 songs -- especially the speciality ones which have closer to 3 or 4.
Re:Wow! (Score:2)
I imagine that doubling the size of the array that iTunes uses would slow down the application substantially - the ID3's are loaded into memory for quick browsing - especially on older machines. Hopefully the iTunes with a fix will auto-switch up to a higher array length when needed so iTunes only takes the performance hit if needed.">easily obtainable today.
If you are nearing the 32,000 song limit, indeed, complain to Apple through the iTunes Feedback [apple.com] system, and hopefully they weill release a patch.
I imagine that doubling the size of the array that iTunes uses would slow down the application substantially - the ID3's are loaded into memory for quick browsing - especially on older machines. Hopefully the iTunes with a fix will auto-switch up to a higher array length when needed so iTunes only takes the performance hit if needed.
Re:Wow! (Score:2)
You know... there are a f fair few other mp3 players available for te Mac OS. No one's forcing you to use iTunes. I certainly hop you're not using only Windows Media Player to listen to your vast collection of music on a windows machine
The end is in sight! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The end is in sight! (Score:2)
Of course, I have a ton of duplicates and no time to go through and weed them out, so that number is wildly inflated.
How much it matters (Score:2)
It doesn't, there.
Perhaps the posted fix for iTunes 2 is applicable? (Score:5, Informative)
A single iTunes 2 music library can hold 32 000 songs. To accommodate more songs, you can create additional music libraries. Follow these steps;
1. Locate the "iTunes Music Library (2)" file inside the iTunes folder (in Documents).
2. Create a folder called "Backup" and copy the iTunes Music Library (2) file to it. If you make a mistake or change your mind about creating multiple Music Library files, you can go back to using this backup file.
3. Create a folder called "Library 1" and copy the iTunes Music Library (2) file to it.
4. Create a folder called "Library 2" and copy the iTunes Music Library (2) file to it.
5. Repeat for each increment of 32 000 songs. For example, if you have more than 64 000 songs, make two Library folders, if you have more than 96 000 songs, make three Library folders, and so forth.
6. Open iTunes, add, delete, or change the songs in the Music Library for the first 32 000 songs.
7. Quit iTunes, copy "iTunes Music Library (2)" mentioned in step 1 into Library 1.
8. Open iTunes, add, delete, or change the songs in the Music Library for the next 32 000 songs.
9. Quit iTunes, copy "iTunes Music Library (2)" mentioned in step 1 into Library 2.
10. Repeat for each 32 000 increment of unique songs
To access each of the different Music Libraries, copy the respective "iTunes Music Library (2)" file to the iTunes folder (in Documents), replacing the "iTunes Music Library (2)" file that is there. Important: If you accidentally move the file instead of copying it, make sure you move it back to the respective folder, or else you may have to redo some of the setup steps.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=615 85&SaveKCWindowURL=http%3A%2F%2Fkbase.info.apple.c om%2Fcgi-bin%2FWebObjects%2Fkbase.woa%2Fwa%2FSaveK CToHomePage&searchMode=Assisted&kbhost=kbase.info. apple.com&showButton=false&randomValue=100&showSur vey=false&sessionID=anonymous%7C164541794
Re:Perhaps the posted fix for iTunes 2 is applicab (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Does it really matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a very modest collection, even for one who doesn't download any music illegally at all. Even then, 2300 songs will play continuously without repeats for more than a week.
If someone would enlighten my ignorant mind: what do you actually do with 32000+ songs, which would play continuously for three months?
Heck, even my measly 5GB iPod holds more music than I can use.
It's perhaps off-topic, but are we collecting data for the sake of the collection? Does it matter if it'd take you three months--without sleep--to actually utilize the data?
As it is, I already have more music than I can actually listen to. For fellow legitimate music users, 32000 songs can easily outlast their lifetime, perhaps the MP3 format, and certainly iTunes'.
So, does it really matter?
I guess it does if you are one of those folks who just download whatever's on kazaa/guntella/whatever today, but for the rest of us with honor, and some taste in music, it really doesn't. 32000 is more than we need.
Re:Does it really matter? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think its very easy to get stuck into the cycle of downloading crap just because you can even if you will never listen to it.
32 THOUSAND songs? I mean, c'mon....... thats just hoarding for the sake of it!
D.
Re:Does it really matter? (Score:2, Insightful)
Hearing new music during "random" play (iTunes random actually kind of sucks)
Sharing a library with friends...
Direct Connect file limits
I think if you want to stick to top 40 stuff from the last 30 years, you could probably live with a ~5k song library. Once you start branching out into different genres and downloading legal (read mp3.com) files, I'd say ~15k will probably give you more breathing room. Remember it's about selection, not sequential play.
Re:Does it really matter? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a 'smart playlist' called "unheard faves" that selects 75 tracks with a rating of 3 or more, and a play count of 3 or less. I set it to random and repeat and let it play while working. This way I almost simulate what it is like to have the radio on at work, but without ads or annoying DJs. When the playlist starts to shrink I kno wit's time to rate some more music.
I do wish the 'smart playlists' would allow better use of boolean operators. How can you ask for all songs rated 3+ but not ambient music or trance? iTunes needs a mood switch.
I'd like to write a small script that pretends to be an MP3 file, but actually just reads out the current time, the weather and some news headlines. Then I'd get it to play on the hour... Kind of like "It's 10am and you are listening to dave's unheard faves. It's -6 outside and snowing. In the news headlines the USA has declared war on Germany [mac.com] - citing their support for international terrorism, and that they started the last two world wars." Ideally this would said using the voice of "Princess" :-)
Re:Does it really matter? (Score:2)
"In the news headlines the less-than a href equals http colon slash slash homepage dot mac dot com slash davesag slash iblog slash davesag percent twenty rants slash War percent twenty and percent twenty Peace slash six six zero two seven niner three three slash index dot html greater-than USA has declared war on Germany less-than slash a greater-than, citing Germany's support for international terrorism, that Germany started the last two world wars, and that the USA intends to start the next one."
Oops, made an editorial comment somewhere in there...
Re:Does it really matter? (Score:2)
That's a trick question, right? Ambient/Trance should never be rated 3+.
Re:Does it really matter? (Score:2, Interesting)
Play nothing but instrumental stuff like Tangerine Dream while playing roleplaying games. Play all speed metal while doing boring coding tasks. Play random gothic progressive while doing creative coding design. Play all ska when I feel like having something energetic, or blues when I want to practice guitar. Etc. Different music for different situations.
Why am I not a "legitimate music user"?
I will grant that I'm not a typical music user; I don't spend anything at all on movies, going out, etc, and a large part of the collection was acquired when I had no car payments and a series of good contracting jobs.
I'll also grant that to someone who can be satisfied with a week's worth of music, much of mine may strike you as in bad taste, as much of it is not very mainstream, but what this has to do with honor is a bit unclear.
Re:Does it really matter? (Score:2)
Re:Does it really matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
A young man I met working as a DJ had a library of well over 10,000 CD's and vinyl LP's he was digitizing when time allowed. He was meticulous in keeping record of what he had -- not just the standard biographical data, but by the sound, beat and mood each piece created. To alleviate costs, he frequently got CD's from flea markets and second hand stores and clearance sales.
For as young as he was and starting out on his own as a professional DJ, his professionalism was impressive. He understood that his career lived and died by his ability to deliver what his customer asked for. And yes, he was using an Apple to manage things for him.
It's one thing to put together the latest hits to play at a dance or a wedding, but it is entirely another thing when an ad agency calls you looking for just the right sound for a commercial. The bigger the library and the faster you can find something relevant in there, the more likely you are going to get the money for the job.
Whenever we watch a TV show, commercial or movie that tries to set a period for things happening, they need the right music. If you're doing a movie about the 50's, you don't want Britney Spears tunes coming out of the jukebox. So they are always looking for someone who can truly deliver what they need, quickly. When they find someone who can do so, they keep bringing their business to that person.
For most people, I think we can say it doesn't matter. But for professionals, I think it could make a difference. Just the fact that there are people finding the iTunes limit is a pretty good indicator.
Parent
Re:Does it really matter? (Score:4, Funny)
No wonder he needs that Gulfstream!
Parent
Re:Does it really matter? (Score:2, Insightful)
If someone's managing a massive music library for professional purposes, I would imagine there are more robust alternatives for the task than a free consumer-ware program like iTunes.
A Story Verified by a Slashdot Editor! (Score:5, Funny)
Respect to pudge [pudge.net] for actually taking the time to run a test to verify the story.
Respectable journalism exercised by Slashdot? Is that a pig flying past my window?
Lucky thing it isn't iMovies.... (Score:2, Funny)
Random Access really matters (Score:5, Insightful)
I have roughly 1300 CDs, bought since 1985 (so far, 1081 ripped, which is 13,938 songs). Without random access, finding that one CD that I have a hankering to hear is a nightmare - even with the CDs filed in 8-CD sheets in a lateral file cabinet. With those CDs in iTunes, it's a matter of typing a few letters into the music browser. Do I want to hear a random selection of Grateful Dead tunes? No sweat. Pink Floyd from beginning to end? Easy. Yes, including solo projects by its various members? A little more difficult, but I won't break a sweat.
Almost 14000 (or extrapolating for the rest, 18200) is an uncomfortably large percentage of the iTunes limit of 32000. It's not quite large enough that I'm going apeshit about this, but somebody who had only twice as many CDs as I do would be screwed, for no good reason.
(Advice to others with large collections: buy an external Firewire disk and back your library up!!)
Re:Random Access really matters (Score:2)
Re:Random Access really matters (Score:2)
No shit!! I don't have quite as many files as you, but I have plenty, and shortly after I got my new computer, Louise, my old FW 80 GB drive died (I will never buy another Maxtor drive...if only I'd known it was Maxtor when i got it). Luckily I had already transferred most of my files to the new HD inside the computer, but I hadn't transferred my MP3s because I didn't plan to--Guenevere, the external drive, was to be my MP3 hard drive.
Norton couldn't get my files back, so I started shopping around for disk utilities (I did most of my "shopping" on LimeWire... : ). Drive 10 acted like it was going to get my files back, but didn't. Finall Disk Rescue acted like it could get my files back, and apparently was capable of doing so, but refused to recover more than one file because it wasn't registered. I shelled out $90 for the program, and got most of my MP3s back...but then Disk Rescue ran out of memory, and some of my files were lost forever.
Now the question is, where do I back up to? I recently got a 120 GB Western Digital drive, but that's for my burgeoning collection of ripped DVDs that threatened to overfill Guenevere and Esmerelda (Louise's built-in 120 GB drive). My illegal practices have stretched my budget too thin! If I'm going to keep buying CDs, I'm going to risk losing my valuable MP3 and AVI collection.
Alphabetical order... (and a question) (Score:2)
I've just got a big HD, so I'm currently ripping the lot in the hope of getting an iPod shortly. (I'm rather hoping it'll be upgraded in the near future.) My big question is: what do you do when there's continuous music across several tracks? I can't find any way to avoid a gap between MP3 tracks. (I've tried iTunes' `Stop Time' feature, but it always gives gaps.) This really spoils stuff like Tubular Bells III, Chilled Ibiza, Jean-Michel Jarre, live albums, &c.
Are the only alternatives really to suffer dropouts, or to combine them into one big track, losing track names and control?
Re:Alphabetical order... (and a question) (Score:2)
Insufficient forsight? Rush to get a product out the door on deadline? Pressure to add features instead of improving the functionality of the basics? Or is this actually a really hard thing to do?
Re:Alphabetical order... (and a question) (Score:2)
I gather some MP3 players can use a `tracklist' to identify separate tracks within a single MP3 file; this might be one good solution, but until iTunes and the iPod support it, it's not one I can use :(
So...LAMP & NetJuke (Score:2)
This is acknowledged limitation .... (Score:5, Informative)
iTunes 2: How to Overcome 32 000 Song Library Size Limitation [apple.com]
=P (Score:2, Funny)
Re:=P (Score:2)
I've got a bit over 1100 songs in iTunes, so I've still got a lot of room to grow. They don't all fit on my iPod, though, so I tell it to only load songs I've listened to at least 3 times.
Running out... (Score:2)
However, I do consider it to be a problem I will eventually run into. Hopefully Apple will address it in iTunes 4.0.
Wait Wait Wait (Score:3, Funny)
Nope, Still don't care.
Re:Since a decade ago, (Score:5, Informative)
#define MAX_SONGS 32000
arbitrarily.
Parent
Re:Since a decade ago, (Score:2)
Still, there is no excuse for using fixed-size arrays these days either. iTunes is written in C++, right?
Re:Since a decade ago, (Score:5, Informative)
C++ with the STL can still be a pain even if you're careful. Try playing with the STL in large amounts of code. Now try it with no free memory. When you run out of memory, it can get really dicey. Truthfully, it can be very tough to tell when you are allocating memory in C++ (or in what order it happened). Copy constructors can be deceptively well hidden. Same for type conversion functions.
There're always the infamous bugs involving not being able allocate memory to append two string objects to print an error message. That sort of thing is tough to ferret out. I mean, unit testing is one thing but how do you check to see if your program handles running out of RAM well in all situations? Very few languages (or OS's) handle that very gracefully. The hoops that you jump through to correctly through an out-of-memory exception are staggering (pre-allocated RAM, stripped down/in-place string processing, emergency garbage-collection runs, that sort of thing).
I don't disagree that a #define is pretty lame, but you see a lot of this sort of thing and it's not all that bad of a practice. It says:
I acknowledge this is an important problem. This is a stopgap measure. It doesn't solve the problem--it only brings it to light later so that it may be solved appropriately when more fundamental issues have been solved.
I used to think about how call linked lists were because they "never ran out of space" like arrays. Debugging code that failed to allocate new nodes during critical operations changed that.
Since I feel it is relavant, let me relate a little story. I found the same sort of limit awhile back with HylaFAX. You can, nominally, upload a single
Arbitrary limitations like this may be annoying and lame, but they have a very important purpose. They allow you to keep coding on functionality before worrying about scalability. While using a scalable design from the beginning is important, "premature optimization is the root of all evil" (Dr. Knuth).
Five years ago, I would have agreed wholeheartedly. Now, I view this kind of thing to be a fairly good practice. I must be getting old.
Parent
Re:Since a decade ago, (Score:2)
If Apple were to rewrite iTunes today, it would most likely be a Cocoa application.
Re:Since a decade ago, (Score:3, Informative)
iTunes was originally SoundJam by Casady & Greene - Apple bought it out, renamed it, gave it that brushed-metal look, and (substantially) continued development on it. This is actually a big part of the reason I don't like it, since I didn't find SoundJam very good and don't like the inherited SJ-isms. That and the brushed metal, anyway.
Since SJ was developed for OS 8/9 and Carbon is the porting API, iTunes is a Carbon app. To make it Cocoa would be a complete rewrite (and pretty pointless - the API isn't all that important frankly).
Re:Since a decade ago, (Score:5, Insightful)
Carbon is a collection of APIs, Cocoa is a RAD framework. Carbon is straight C, Cocoa is Objective-C which (unlike C++) relies on a runtime environment for things such as message passing and polymorphism. Also note that Objective-C winds up getting preprocessed into plain C code before it ever gets compiled. It is no more or less native than C. Finally, the two major compilers for the Mac, gcc and Metrowerks cc, compile both Carbon and Cocoa code fine, although Metrowerks' compiler is rumored to be much better at optimizing for PPC chips.
Cocoa provides you with large amount of functionality "for free", but adds a lot of overhead at the same time. Carbon gives you virtually nothing for free (unless you use CoreFoundation, but that's beyond the scope of this post).
(If you want to argue semantics about APIs and frameworks, just try calling any signifigant amount of Cocoa code from Carbon code. You will get all sorts of wacky side-effects. Now try to call Carbon code from Cocoa code. Oh hey, it just works!)
As a result, less experienced programmers flock to Cocoa, and hence you see a lot of underperforming Cocoa applications. Of course, lots of good programmers put out super-slow Cocoa applications as well, only optimize them later (look at Mail.app). Optimization in Carbon is totally different because you don't have a prebuilt library of objects which may or may not be providing tons of services that you don't need, plus you are in charge of drawing everything and handling your own events. In (an over-generalized) conclusion: Optimization in Carbon is a subtractive process, in which you hone and compact your code into a lean, mean, executing machine. Optimization in Cocoa is an additive process. You can augment existing functionality in a new and streamlined way, or you can add straight C code (or call Carbon!) to replace functionality provided by the (sometimes bloated) builtin objects.
Parent
Re:Since a decade ago, (Score:2)
Re:How come 32,000? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:How come 32,000? (Score:4, Informative)
iTunes will either use their own internal list structure, or the Carbon Data Browser control. The Cocoa equivalent, NSOutlineView, still had some restrictions before 10.2 (e.g., at most 32Kb children per item).
Parent
Re:How come 32,000? (Score:2)
When iTunes starts deleting songs for you based on content, I'll post a photo of me sticking my foot in my mouth.
Until then, lay off the conspiracy theories (well, at least about iTunes)
Re:pirate! (Score:2)
Not that I paid for all of mine. Oh no, they're coming to get me!