Worlds Largest iTunes Library

[The Computer Audiophile]

Here is an interesting interview with Will Friedwald, a writer for the New York Sun, who proclaims to have the worlds largest iTiunes library.

 

Here is a snippet from the article:

 

"I just re-compiled the main library (something that takes about six hours – I only do it a few times a year!). Here are the new stats:

 

849 GB | 172,150 tracks | 809.2 days

2,935 artists | 11,561 albums

iTunes library database file - 282 MB

iTunes library XML file - 259 MB

 

For reasons I will get into later, I also have several sub-libraries; theoretically, all my music will eventually go into the main library. I also have a separate “annex” of about 200-300 GB of stuff that I am gradually adding in to the main library. If I were to put everything together, which I am slowly doing, it will be around 1200 GB."

 

The full article is available here from Glenn Wolsey.

 

 

Is anyone close to this?

 

[Lord Chaos]

I have about 18,000 tracks, 420GB or thereabouts. I used to think that was big. I've heard of several collections in the 25,000 track vicinity.

 

Even with this small library I tend to forget things. At least it's easier to find them in Itunes than in physical stacks of CDs. I figure an hour a day of listening to music. I have 54 days right now. I need to get busy.

 

[willfriedwald]

Yes, I really enjoy having the music on the drive - it makes it so much easier to listen "vertically" rather than "horizontally" - or is it the other way around, you're not stuck listening to what's on a given CD, you can pretty much program and re-program your own sequences spontaneously every time. It puts the creativity of sequencing and programming in the hands of the listener.

 

w

 

[cornishmanc]

I've got 29,653 tracks although about a hundred are probably dupes

 

[willfriedwald]

is there any body reading this that has hundreds & hundreds of thousands of tracks?

 

anybody (besides me) with multiple terrabytes?

 

so far Amarok is the way to go for big mega libraries (or so I have found) but you have to start a whole linux set up for it...

 

w

 

[darrenwm]

I'm much lower, at around 400GB and 20,000+ tracks.

 

[Olive Empithrie]

There was a fellow on the Naim forum not too long ago who posted pictures of his physical library of over 22,000 CDs, which I suppose might be not too far off 300,000 songs.

 

Once you get to that sort of size I would think it more practical to just put a disc in the spinner and play it rather than attempt to spend months or years transferring everything to computer, unless you had a team of people working on it.

 

Olive.

 

 

[willfriedwald]

am not familiar with the NAIM forum..

 

usually I don't transfer more than a few CDs a day, but then I've been doing it for almost six years.

 

sometimes, of course, I get am ambitious, and will go through a whole artist in a day... or whatever it takes.

 

w

 

[audiozorro]

A music library consisting of tens of thousands of CDs or albums is a very nice collection. But I think you only need to rip those CDs you’re likely or want to play periodically. IMO ripping 22,000 CDs is pointless and the idea of ever playing all the discs in a typical CD player is a daunting task. Let’s see that’s playing 6 CDs everyday for the next 10 years and not adding anymore CDs during the same 10 years (not bloody likely for anyone that has acquired 22,000 CDs).

 

Of course ripping and playback of CDs do not have to be mutually exclusive efforts. ITunes, for example, can play the CD as it rips. The problem however is that the entire disc is usually ripped during the time it takes to play the first one or two tracks. Many people would prefer to rip another 10-20 CDs, rather than wait for iTunes to play the first disc. My preference has been to rip on one computer and listen to another music source (another computer music server, CD player or turntable).

 

 

 

[willfriedwald]

it's all true... my listening habits are rather extreme, I listen to music all day long, so I need to rip as much as possible, as fast as possible. But I don't recommend anyone else following my example...

 

w

 

[1975DCS]

849 GB | 172,150 tracks? Damn! Must be small files than! Anyway I used to have a lot too, but after properly tagging (not that auto shit, nope manually, using discogs) I now have the correct version/mix/remix/edit in the filename and that saves me from a lot of doubles and triples. I also don't copy complete CD's if there is just one good song, just because to have a massive collection... Currently I almost have 5,000 songs, all of which I know and like to hear and most of them in true FLAC too! Wouldn't want to trade with his massive collection!

 

[Olive Empithrie]

Respect! Although I see there are a few recent comments on the original article from people who claim to have larger collections than you:

 

http://www.glennwolsey.com/2007/04/19/interview-will-friedwald-owner-of-the-worlds-largest-itunes-collection/#comment-11411

 

http://www.glennwolsey.com/2007/04/19/interview-will-friedwald-owner-of-the-worlds-largest-itunes-collection/#comment-152633

 

http://www.glennwolsey.com/2007/04/19/interview-will-friedwald-owner-of-the-worlds-largest-itunes-collection/#comment-227464

 

[willfriedwald]

yes.

 

(1) I was putting the idea out there - claiming to have the world's largest library - just to get people's attention, get a reaction, and get a discussion started. It's a preposterous claim to make, obviously!

 

(2) That was in April 2007 - the library has grown substantially since then.

 

In fact, the reason I'm re-iterating the claim right now is just to keep the conversation ongoing. Am still trying to find out what the best music library player - programs out there might be - has anyone tried media monkey, for instance (not that it would do me any good, since I don't use windows...)

 

w

 

 

[hxs28]

Hi all,

 

my name is Paolo and I am part of a band called 'Tutto Matto' that did quite ok in the early 2000's...

I am now 43 years old and I have collected more than 40.000 vinyls since I was 14; since I had a Mac I have started passing my collection on a digital format, I bought a lot of records and on 10 October 2010 I hold 280.000 Songs on My Itunes which are spread over 5 terabytes, namely: two western Digital 2tb each and a WD 1tb;

A part of these are 24bit format 44.1; and all the records are passed on to digital trough a graham leslie pre amp.

Another large part is still in mp3 but I am changing all of them and eventually all the songs will be 24 bit, 44.1.

I need another couple of years to reach quote 500.000 as I that is the time needed to convert the remained of my vinyl collection.

 

I use a MAc Pro 2 X 2.8 GHZ quad Core Intel Xeon where my Itunes is installed.

 

I am sure there are people with larger libraries (I know of a collector who hold nearly 600.000 songs, but the one mentioned in this forum is quite modest if considered under collector's standards.

 

I, of course do not mean to be arrogant, just to share this big passion and love for knowledge of music with the all of you: love and peace, Paolo

 

[willfriedwald]

If you like, get in touch with me off-list - [email protected].

 

Thanks!

 

WF

 

[davidovada]

Ciao, Paolo!

Belin, I love your music. My local dj friends play Tutto Matto all the time. Bravo. I believe that you are Genovese. I am an american living just outside of Genova (Ovada). If you're ever in the 'hood come by to my house. We can listen to some jazz and I'll cook a foccaccia di recco(sempre nell'forno a legna).

 

cheers - david

 

 

 

[Wavelength]

Chris,

 

Not even close... I have a customer who has been doing computer audio for like 12 years. He went to the MP3 auction when they went out of business and picked up two dual RAID 3T rack systems and has them all full. He how has it setup with quad 2T drives as the nice thing about these racks is it has glass fiber 1G Ethernet directly to a bridged network which his iMac sits off of.

 

Last count was more than 56K albums. He also has something like 1200 hours of 24/88.2 jazz recordings from some venue in NYC.

 

Thanks

Gordon

 

[almaatakz]

Quality, not quantity!

Still, very interesting.

 

[PeterSt]

Oh well, by the time I had prepared this post I now see that there's someone with 56K albums. Ok, in mp3. Does that count ? hehe

 

Allright, 326,448 tracks on 29,832 FLAC/WAV albums here. But then who needs all those (Jazz) Brian's eh ? or does even know them.

 

Collection desease ...

 

 

 

PS: That's on 13.5TB with some free space left here and there.

 

PPS: If I don't make a mistake this is ~ 24,860 hours; Still only 2.84 years of continuous playback. Doable ... :-)

 

[I. G.]

I guess those giant libraries contains 95% of albums listened to only once then never again. This way it's easy to pile up them. I keep only albums I liked, about 1300. I have playlists for albums played only once and not played in the last year, so I can continuously get them back into the rotation.

 

[roscoeiii]

In case some of these huge libraries are really slowing down iTunes due to their size and the limits of your computer, or to just help make them more manageable, I thought I'd mention the little known (though maybe not on this forum) feature of iTunes to create and choose multiple libraries. To access this, just hold down Option when you open iTunes and you are given the ability to create a new library or to choose new libraries. I have used this in a couple ways, and can imagine some other ways of using this as well. For example:

 

1) having one library for just the music on the compueter's hard drive, and another tha includes both that music and the music on an external HD. Most of my music was on a portable external HD, but I didn't always bring it with me and this kept me from selecting music in iTunes that wasn't accessible.

 

2) having one library for only hi-rez or lossless tracks. With a mishmash of lossless 24/96 and mp3s, it allows me to just browse through the higher quality recordings in my collection when audio quality is what I am after.

 

3) having a separate library for different genres.

 

Yes, some of this can be done with playlists as well, but I thought it was worth pointing out, especially when folks find large libraries were slowing things down.

 

[weyskipper]

Roscoeiii, that is extremely useful. Thanks very much.

 

[1975DCS]

Hi Paulo,

 

Why do want and have your music in 24 bit, 44.1? I thought 24 bit would only make sense on HDCD's and XRCD's or 88.2 and 96 kHz?

 

And how do you make 24 bit rips? Or do you buy special 24 bit downloads? Is the 24 bit in ALAC?

 

Ps. To bad all this new digital technology doesn't result in perfect recordings regarding to pop and dance music. I do prefer some 80's and 90's in terms of quality despite being remastered from an analog source... Don't ya think? If only the iTunes store offered 16/44.1 and 24/96 in ALAC... No need for DVD-A or SACD, which are hard to rip in hi-res...

 

 

[djweasel1980]

My Library Is So Much Larger Than That! I have been building my media library for 15 years now. My library report reads,

 

Music:

1,960.22GB, 323,164 tracks,

895 days, 23 Hours, 45 Minutes, 40 Seconds

39,616 Artists, 34,306 Albums

 

Karaoke:

670GB, 153,511 Tracks,

786 days, 12 Hours, 13 Minutes, 8 Seconds

26,338 Artists 10,838 Albums

 

Music Videos:

506GB, 9,660 Tracks

108 Days, 16 Hours, 15 Minutes, 14 Seconds

278 Artists

 

Media Library 1 = 2TB Hard Drive

Media Library 2 = 2TB Hard Drive

Karaoke Library = 2 TB Hard Drive

Music Videos = 1TB Hard Drive

Backup SYS = 3TB Hard Drive

 

I am running 1 Main Library for my Discographies, and 1 Sub Library for my Various Artist Albums, Compelations, And Movie Soundtracks

 

As to the point of why do i need this much music, My answer is simple. I am a DJ and music is like a condom, I'd rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it!

 

 

[djweasel1980]

I Have 323,164 Songs Music, 153,511 Songs Karaoke, and 9,660 Music Videos. I've spent 15 years building my library.