It’s not uncommon for portable devices to have large storage capacities that support tens of gigabytes of available data storage. This amount of space is ideal for carrying a good selection of your digital music library, along with other types of media files. While these larger capacity devices eliminate much of the challenge of hardware storage limitations, it’s still useful to estimate how many songs you can cram into your remaining free gigabytes of space.
How much STORAGE do I need for music production?
Most popular music today clocks in at between three and five minutes long, so most online estimators assume files around that length. However, you may have other things in your collection that could skew your estimates, such as remixes or digitized 12-inch vinyl singles. These can be significantly longer than typical song lengths, as can orchestral works, operas, podcasts, and similar content.
The bitrate used to encode a song has a large effect on its file size. For example, a song encoded at 256 Kbps will result in a larger file size than the same song encoded at 128 Kbps. The encoding method can also affect how many songs will fit on your portable device: files with a variable bitrate will result in a smaller file size compared to files with a constant bitrate.
One reason the VBR vs. CBR question matters is that VBR files generally sound better and sometimes result in smaller file sizes if the audio properties of the original file support it, but they decode more slowly and so some playback devices cannot handle them. CBR has gained universal acceptance despite known limitations in acoustic quality.
