How many songs realistically can you put on a 20 gig ipod?

[niwi7]

I have 4400 on my computer


should i get a 20 gig ipod?

if i highlight all my songs and click properties it says its only 14.5 gigs but on the ads for the 20 gig ipod it says it can hold 5000 songs....am i missing something?

 

[Aftermath]

It'll vary depending on the quality of the songs. The higher the bitrate, the larger the file, the fewer you can fit in 20 gig. If you lower the bitrate, you can fit more songs in.

 

[niwi7]

but i can fit 20 gigs of songs on a 20 gig ipod right?

like it wont stop me at 5000 even if its not filled up yet, right?

 

[simms]

Yes yes. The first question is right. You can put more than 5000 if they are small...

<-- 20gb ipod owner

 

[simms]

Hmm.. I am selling mine too.

 

[0roo0roo]

about 3000...i go with about 6-7mb per song.. normal decent mp3 bitrate of 192+ or vbr. more if u use more compression

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: niwi7
but i can fit 20 gigs of songs on a 20 gig ipod right?

like it wont stop me at 5000 even if its not filled up yet, right?

You are correct sir.

 

[Aftermath]

Oh yes, you can fit in 20 gigs worth into it.

When they advertise that it can hold 5000 songs, or up to 5000 songs, they don't tell you the quality of those songs. It's just a nice number to look at.
If you assume (and this is assuming a lot) that the average song is about 3 minutes long, and is roughly 3 megs in size at 128kbps, then you could fit roughly 6,600 songs into that amount of space. If you increase the bitrate to 256kbps, and assume that the files double in size, then you could fit roughly 3,300 songs into 20 gigabytes. (These are very rough numbers.)

When they say 5000 songs, they're probably using a bitrate like 192kbps as a benchmark. So they can half way legitimately say "You can fit 5000 songs (at 192kbps) on this iPod!"

I hope that helps.