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Media (Apple) Businesses Media Apple

iTunes Tops Out At 32,000 Songs 154

Posted by pudge 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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iTunes Tops Out At 32,000 Songs More

iTunes Tops Out At 32,000 Songs

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  • Since a decade ago, (Score:1, Insightful)

    by pediddle ( 592795 )
    You'd think with all the advanced, nearly brainless programming languages available, we wouldn't have to worry about 16-bit signed integer limits anymore. 32- and 64-bits have been available for just as long, and it's not like the extra two bytes in each address are going to bankrupt a Powermac with 1GB RAM.

    It's Y2K all over again. Just more lazy programmers.

    • Re:Since a decade ago, (Score:5, Informative)

      by _Splat ( 22170 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @02:05AM (#5317499)
      Since the limit is 32,000, not 32,768, I don't think it's a datatype limitation. More likely, some programmer probably did

      #define MAX_SONGS 32000

      arbitrarily.

      • You're right... that'll teach me for not reading the article first.

        Still, there is no excuse for using fixed-size arrays these days either. iTunes is written in C++, right?
        • Objective-C, most likely. Its what all NeXT and Cocoa applications are written in (usually).

          I think you CAN make Cocoa applications in C++, and you definitely can in Java.

          D.
          • iTunes is actually written in C++, and it's Carbon.
            • Oh. Interesting.

              How come?

              For the greatness that Cocoa is (apparently) there sure is alot of Carbon stuff coming from apple.. hell even the Finder is Carbon for some reason?

              Any ideas why?

              What else is written in Carbon thats part of OSX?

              D.
              • I seem to remember hearing somewhere that Carbon apps end up more optimized for either the PowerPC or the G4 specifically, while Cocoa apps have to resort to some sort of emulation. Can't remember where I saw this, though. Perhaps an old Slashdot story.

                • Re:Since a decade ago, (Score:5, Insightful)

                  by entrylevel ( 559061 ) <jaundoh@yahoo.com> on Monday February 17, 2003 @01:18PM (#5320039)
                  You are full of poop! (Or your source is!) Cocoa is as native as the next guy (as long as the next guy isn't Java).

                  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.
                • I think its more that Carbon apps run natively in OSX. Cocoa apps are ran in the classic enviorment (OS9). I could be wrong its been a few months since I had to deal with macs.
              • Oh. Interesting. How come?
                Because Apple built iTunes for OS 9 first. Carbon is primarily for OS 9 to OS X compatibility.
                If Apple were to rewrite iTunes today, it would most likely be a Cocoa application.

              • Re:Since a decade ago, (Score:3, Informative)

                by Anonymous Coward
                Because Apple didn't write iTunes originally, and it wasn't for OS X.

                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, Informative)

          by KagatoLNX ( 141673 ) <kagato@s[ ]a.net ['ouj' in gap]> on Monday February 17, 2003 @02:52AM (#5317687) Homepage
          Actually, all true arrays are fixed size. I think you mean a sparse array. About the only useful properties of a vanilla array are constant-time indexing and a fixed footprint. You probably are thinking of the Standard Template Library (STL) implementation of a sparse array. While this is nominally part of the C++ standard now, it is not a silver bullet.

          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 .tif file of a fax and then use it in any number of fax jobs. Well, it topped out at 32,000 faxes exactly. Turns out, they arbitrarily limited the job number to this. Interestingly, it was a #define and they coded it so I only changed it one place and it worked. Then I found out that Ext2 supports no more than than 32,768 hard links for a single file (hylafax hard links the .tifs to unique filenames for each job). Even ReiserFS limited me similarly (although it was around 64k). Turns out, until Linux has a 64-bit VFS, this will always be a problem. And backwards compatiblity will be a b*tch when that day comes!

          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. :(

  • Don't worry, Apple's pretty good with updates (Score:5, Funny)

    by image ( 13487 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @01:17AM (#5317293) Homepage
    I'm sure they'll come out with a patch sometime in the next 12 weeks, 4 days, 21 hours, and 20 minutes.

    (Oops, 15 minutes. It took me a few to divide.)

  • Wow! (Score:5, Funny)

    by cappadocius ( 555740 ) <cappadocius AT v ... squerade DOT com> on Monday February 17, 2003 @01:18AM (#5317300)
    Wow! That's a lot of CDs. At around 15 songs a CD and $15 a CD, that means you must have spent at least $32,000 on CDs!

    Well, at least the RIAA will be happy...

    • Re:Wow! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Xunker ( 6905 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @01:37AM (#5317398) Homepage Journal
      Fifteen dollars a CD.. what a magical fanatsy world you live in.
      • Seems very similar to /. math, or perhaps "White House math" ... 15*32,000=32,000
        • Uhm, 15*32,000=32,000 if you're saying there is only one song on each CD (even singles have more than that). He already stated that it's assuming an average of 15 songs a CD.

      • Re:Wow! (Score:5, Funny)

        by cappadocius ( 555740 ) <cappadocius AT v ... squerade DOT com> on Monday February 17, 2003 @03:31AM (#5317808)
        Fifteen dollars a CD.. what a magical fanatsy world you live in.

        The magic fantasy world where all math works out easily in my head.

      • troll (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        What a KY world you live in...stop slamming people that do or don't pay exactly the same you do for internet access, gasoline, fritos, shoe laces, condoms, vehicle registration, pork rinds, blank video tapes, big gulp refills, stamps, flu shots, Viagra refill co-pays, popcorn, Stone's concert tickets, off-street parking, lip gloss, cordless phone batteries, PVC, CDs, DVDs and sex before bed. What a troll...not even funny any more.
      • shouldn't it be 14.99 a CD anyway?

    • Re:Wow! (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      As an avid music buyer and music journalist, I think I have approximately 2000 cds, many of which are in my computer. Having also ripped lots of vinyls to mp3 I think we could assume that would amount to a grand total of 3000 cds. As my musical tastes are very varied, with metal opuses of 15 minutes and more on some records, and punk, psychobilly and other styles with traditionally short songs, we can for convenience count with 8 songs per cd (if some of them are singles/maxis). 3000 x 8 = 24000. That, plus all the free music I've downloaded from the 'net amounts to very close to iTunes magic limit.

      And I haven't even counted my "illicitly" acquired music, which I would personally call "reference tunes" which I use when writing reviews, but you might call it piracy or freedom or whatever. I don't really care. What matters is that for me, a limit on 32000 songs is definitely A Bad Thing, and one which might actually affect whether my next non-laptop computer is going to be an Apple or not.

      For all the "real" music pirates out there, I guess it's even more of a problem. 32000 songs is "just" about 320GB.

      However, I do realize that I am one of rather few people who has any semi-legitimate needs for this amount of music, and I don't feel like dropping nukes over Cupertino for it. Knowing Apple - they'll probably fix it in the next major update of iTunes, and with their current strategy, make us pay for it.
      • 320GB? How do you figure? I can put 1000 songs on my 5GB iPod, so that works out to 160GB - a drive size iTunes Feedback [slashdot.org] 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.">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.
      • ...a limit on 32000 songs is definitely A Bad Thing, and one which might actually affect whether my next non-laptop computer is going to be an Apple or not.

        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 :)

    • Re:Wow! (Score:3, Informative)

      by rtaylor ( 70602 )
      Funnily enough, I actually know of a family with *at least* that many CDs -- probably closer to double.

      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)!
      • Sorry, let me qualify that the younger 2 have only recently started with collecting :).

        And also that most CDs don't have 15 songs -- especially the speciality ones which have closer to 3 or 4.
      • Funnily enough, I actually know of a family with *at least* that many CDs -- probably closer to double.

        Where's their ftp site? ;o)

  • The end is in sight! (Score:4, Funny)

    by cei ( 107343 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @01:36AM (#5317394) Homepage Journal
    At least I have a goal now... ~1/4 of the way there.
    • Is really the DMCA police! - No im completely with you, 8,439 songs as of this morning for 25 days of music and 50 GB of space. So all I need is a 200GB hard drive and 100 days (24 hours a day) to listen to it all once I hit the 32,000 song peak.
      Hmmm maybe Apple was looking out for us by putting a peak on it. My iMac and iPod have utterly changed my life for sure, so far I feel in a positive way. And yes, anything worth doing is worth overdoing.... But just maybe Apple knows something that happens to people when they have that much music. Hell, if your listening to your iPod 24/7 you never have a chance to get hit by the Reality Distortion Field.
    • Whoa, i'm almost 1/3 of the way there.

      Of course, I have a ton of duplicates and no time to go through and weed them out, so that number is wildly inflated.
      • try MOA Tunes http://beam.to/woodenbrain - It does not work all that well when you try to sick it on say 3000 files at once, but one artist at a time it works wonders. It has time to go through and weed them out plus "tUrn_THIS" "Into This." With all the hours this little fucker has saved me I had to write them up a little ad here.
  • How much it matters is an exercise left to the reader.

    It doesn't, there.

  • As I do not have 32,000 songs as of yet I am unable to test this, but does anyone know if this would work?

    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

  • Does it really matter? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by euggie ( 642977 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @02:21AM (#5317552)
    FWIW, I have about a little shy of 2300 songs here, all from CDs that I purchased since 1992'ish...

    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.
    • Agreed!

      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.
    • It's nice to have any music you can think of availible instantly in iTunes. With 2k songs that's just not going to happen (if you are serious about your music that is!). Other reasons for a huge library:
      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.
      • I have almost 4,000 tunes in my iTunes library. That's 18Gb of music, almost 1/3 of my laptop's total hard drive; a mere 12.2 days of music. It's also all of my onld CDs, my girlfriends' CDs and a few random tracks gathererd from friends. My iPhoto collection weighs in at around the same size (almost 7000 photos) leaving me few backup options and sod-all space for work files. luckily I am programmer and text takes up almost no room. I doubt I would ever hit the 32,000 song limit, even if I ripped all of my friends' CDs too. I'll run out of drive space in my laptop well before that happens.

        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" :-)

        • For your smart playlist why couldn't you just do an AND query with my rating > *** + Genre != Ambient + Genre != Trance?

          As far as using text to speech in os x, you should check out the "osacript" command. You can pass it any applescript (including 'say'...for text to speech) and it executes it. Create a shell or perl script that grabs some headlines, and cron job it, and there you go. I've got one that plays my "wake up" list in itunes in the morning, then anounces the time (because the alarm goes off twice and I often fall back asleep).

          Here's the talking alarm script:

          #!/bin/sh

          sleep $1;date +'say "%l %M"' | sed s/\ 00/\ o\'clock/ | sed s/\ 0/o/ | osascript
        • How would your computer read the link in the headline?

          "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...
        • 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?

          That's a trick question, right? Ambient/Trance should never be rated 3+.
          • i guess that depends on your state of mind :-) iTunes needs a mood setting, or at least a way of grouping genres so i could have a meta-genre like 'chilled' that included ambient, trance. indian minimalism etc and then set up smart playlists to only play me chilled music when i am coding, but 'indi-rock' when debugging.
    • Some of the things I do with the 12,000 songs I have ripped from my own cds:

      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.
    • Just because you clowns listen to the same 2300 songs over and over again does not mean the rest of us do. Realistically, that amounts to less than 200 cds. I had that many cds (or records as the case may be, sheesh) when I was 12. Some folks listen to more than one type of music, yes, it is hard to believe. Some people even listen to all types of music (okay, I hate country, but many people like it). It is very easy to have 10,000 tracks, agreed though, 32000 is a lot, but not morally wrong. I do not think the poster asked you to rate his music collection, nor like me, does he probably care. I also do not believe apple went out and asked a bunch of music fans how many songs they had. Some dumbass developer just said, well, 32000 sounds like a nice round number. It is a sad fact that many product developers do not take "reality" into account when they develop software. "Oh, it works with five songs, I'm sure it will work with 5,000". Not a sane presumption. Ever. Just because you do not have 32,000 tracks does not mean no one should have that many.

    • Re:Does it really matter? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Frightened_Turtle ( 592418 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @11:08AM (#5319190) Homepage
      Actually, for some music and entertainment professionals, it can matter! DJ's that we hire for various social functions have to maintain a highly diverse library. Jobs can run from a rave one night, to a church social the next.

      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.

      • Re:Does it really matter? (Score:4, Funny)

        by presearch ( 214913 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @12:21PM (#5319655)
        Jobs can run from a rave one night, to a church social the next.

        No wonder he needs that Gulfstream!

      • 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.

      • If you plan to use it professionally then nothing is really stopping you from creating different users for different genres. Every user has his own iTunes Library by default. Then you can have as many times 32.000 as you wish. And it's easier to switch than the library-copy workaround posted somewhere else.

      • Remember that iTunes is clearly targeted at the casual user.

        "...but it is entirely another thing when an ad agency calls you looking for just the right sound for a commercial."

        If a person is capable of running a profitable business using only free software provided by Apple, more power to them. I don't advocate spending money where you don't have to. But (I hope) you wouldn't use iMovie as the basis for your video production house. You'd use Final Cut Pro, or some other powerful, made-for-professionals tool.

        iTunes is a great "end-user" music player. I've never gotten the impression that it was attempting to be any more than that.
    • Your argument applies to CDs too. Why should anyone own enough CDs that can amount to 32,000 songs?

      And I think the answer is, "why should you care?"
  • Follow these easy steps to circumvent the problem once you hit 32k songs:

    1. Open your favorite MP3 editor.
    2. Load the 32,000th song in your collection.
    3. Load the 32,001st song (that you wish to add to the collection)
    4. Copy the 32,001st song. Switch to the 32,000th song. 5. Paste at the end of song. 6. Save. 7. Repeat for additional songs.
    • Brute force solution:
      1. Cmd+A (to select all)
      2. Delete or Backspace (to delete all)
      3. Click "Yes" on the dialog window if it appears.
      4. Empty trash (put Finder into focus) Cmd+Shift+Delete(or Backspace)

  • How come 32,000? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by ptaff ( 165113 )
    Well, that number not being a true power of 2 (that would make 32,768), we should conclude that the limit was forced by design, not by variable-size.

    Now why did they choose put a compiled-in limit below what is possible? To make it possible afterwards to "patch" with a smaller number to comply with a bogus DRM "security measure"?

    • Re:How come 32,000? (Score:4, Informative)

      by justzisguy ( 573704 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:38AM (#5318012)
      The 32,000 song max is a limit of the Carbon list manager (it uses the 'short' data type for the number of rows). Either Apple will have to update the Carbon framework or move over to the Cocoa framework, which if memory serves, does not have this limitation.

      • Re:How come 32,000? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Lynn Benfield ( 649615 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @05:48AM (#5318152)
        iTunes does not use the List Manager - that's been obsolete for quite some time. List Manager performance degrades drastically when you have a large number of items, and it's limited to 32Kb of data (you could only have 32Kb items if they were 1 byte each in size). Remember that API dates from 1984, when screens were 9" and a list with 32,000 items was pretty unlikely.

        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).

  • A Story Verified by a Slashdot Editor! (Score:5, Funny)

    by soundsop ( 228890 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @02:42AM (#5317641) Homepage

    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?

  • Because, gosh darnit, if it were iMovies, I'd have already used up 32,000 slots on porn alone!

  • Random Access really matters (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tm2b ( 42473 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @02:48AM (#5317669) Journal
    The more music you have, the more important it is to have random access to that music. It's no great shakes to find a CD you want to listen to if you have 10 or 100 CDs. Not so for > 1000.

    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!!)
    • I have approximately 1000 CDs. I don't have any trouble finding the one I want.

      I store them in their original packaging (usually jewel cases or digipaks) on Boltz cd racks [boltz.com], in alphabetical order (by artist, obviously).

      Here's a picture. [ducker.org] (please to excuse slow load times)
      • Alphabetical order means that your collection is too homogeneous! I've a similar number, and I have to split down by genre - everything from folk/rock to Renaissance and baroque classical to shows to psychedelia to electronic music, and lots more.

        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?

        • In iTunes you can fade on track into the next, and the time they overlap is adjustable (up to around 12 seconds IIRC) but I believe that this feature is missing from the iPod
        • The solution is for Apple's software developers to write iTunes in such a way as to load the next track while the current track is still playing, getting it ready to play as soon as the current track is over. I don't know why this isn't already the case, but then, I don't know why they limited the library size either.

          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?
    • I make a smart play list of songs with number of listens == 0, max 100, selected at random. Then on my iPod I select that playlist and have *it* do random play (otherwise the playlist tends to clump songs by each artist together). When I'm done my daily iPod listening, I plug back into mac, and quickly go through and rate the songs that I heard that day. Hopefully that way I'll listen to my entire collection at least once before I die!
    • (Advice to others with large collections: buy an external Firewire disk and back your library up!!)


      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.
  • NetJuke [sourceforge.net] ~ But then you have the issue of loading up those four iPods....

  • This is acknowledged limitation .... (Score:5, Informative)

    by e. boaz ( 67350 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @10:22AM (#5318907) Homepage
    Apple's knowledge base readily admits this. See this link for a workaround:
    iTunes 2: How to Overcome 32 000 Song Library Size Limitation [apple.com]

  • It is interesting to speculate the exact nature of this limit, be it an implicit limit in the structure used or an explicit #define. However, the limit does not seem to have an immediate practical effect for most people who use iTunes as a simple consumer jukebox. How many of us have 150GB worth or hard disk space. To me this would imply you had a new fangled maxed out Xserve streaming you audio, in which case one would hope you might have a more sophisticated player.

    Of course, from programming elegance point of view, I hope that this is not one of those limits that require the entire codebase to be rewritten when it needs to be changed

  • =P (Score:2, Funny)

    by Dinosaur Jr. ( 651083 )
    No one will ever need more than 32000 songs.
    • "No one will ever need more than 640K." - Bill Gates
    • Actually, there were only 10,000 songs - some of them were really long.
    • Of course, the radio stations seem to make due with about a thousand or so, not countng the pop music stations that play the same 20 songs all day long.

      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.

  • At about 5 MB per song (typical for my library at any rate), 32000 tracks adds up to about 149 GB, using 2^30 for 1GB. I may someday be able to use up 150 GB of HD space for my iTunes library, but it ain't gonna be soon. When it happens, I'll deal with it. If Apple hasn't released an update that raises this limit .. which I doubt will be left alone for long ..
  • I consider my MP3 collection [dhs.org] to be fairly large as collections go, and I'm more likely to run out of disk space on the three drives in my computer (total 320 GB) than to hit 32767 songs.

    However, I do consider it to be a problem I will eventually run into. Hopefully Apple will address it in iTunes 4.0.
    • that might not have been the smartest move posting that here. you might be receiving a small letter from the RIAA some time soon, but thanks for the Art of Noise!

  • Wait Wait Wait (Score:3, Funny)

    by phoenix_orb ( 469019 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @05:50PM (#5321656)
    Wait Wait Wait..

    Nope, Still don't care.


  • 32,000 songs should be enough for anyone.

    Heh heh

  • So... (Score:2)

    by viktor ( 11866 )

    32.000 shouldn't really be considered that small a number. After all, iPhoto gets painfully slow (one minute just to start up?) at 800 or so photos.

    So 32.000 songs sounds ok to me...

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