Music Thieves?

Robert Scoble summarized some of the reaction to Steve Ballmer's comments about most music on an iPod[1] being stolen. Very upsetting.

And if we're honest, Steve Ballmer's comments are on the money.

Let's do some simple math (Fermi question style):
  1. A $399 iPod holds 40GB.
  2. At 1MB / Minute (rule of thumb for 128 KB/s), that's 40,000 minutes of music[2].
  3. At 3 minutes per song, that's over 13,000 songs.
  4. At 13 songs / album, that's 1000 CD's.
  5. At $17 / CD, that's $17,000 to fill up a  $399 iPod. Sure, you can get CD's cheaper, but considering that half the songs on an album are lame and don't make it to the iPod, I figure $17 / CD is fair. Yeah, you can download them one at at time from iTunes / Walmart / etc., but how long will it take to download 13,000 songs clicky clicky style? I'm sticking at $17 / CD.
How many people, honestly, have spent $17,000 on music? Okay, you got last year's model and only got 20 GB... have you really paid the entire $8500 to fill it up?

The real question... do you have a digital copy of at least one song you haven't paid for? I know I don't want to answer that question...

I think Ballmer's just being honest. Are we?

And if you're that diamond in the rough who's gonna get all up in my face, how many of your friends are legit on the MP3 front? What percent of the music on the world's iPods is paid for? We all know it's true, and Information Minister bit is starting to look purty silly.

[1] Or any digital music device. iPod just happens to be the popular one at the moment.
[2] Closer to 41,000 minutes since a GB is technically more then 1000 MB, but I'll spot you the GB. Who loves ya, baby?

6 Comments



  • $17 a CD? You obviously don't use iTunes do you?



    And you know you can store data on it too - don't you.



    And besides, you say three minutes a song - but you can only fit one or two 'Yes' albums on the 40Gb :P

  • How many people fill their 20GB iPod? I've got just over a GB on mine ...



    I'm no thief, and nor are MILLIONS of other iPod users.



    Get another soap box.



  • Your math is off due to assumptions about track lengths, tracks per CD, average CD price, etc. Simpler math based solely on data:



    1 average music CD = .6GB (rarely do you get a full 72 minutes)

    40GB = 66 CDs uncompressed @ 1.536Mbps (red book audio)

    192kbps MP3 = 8:1 compression

    40GB HD = 530 compressed CDs @ $15 = $8000



    I don't know about you, but I know plenty of people who have amassed more than 500 CDs, and they are the same people who are likely to have an uber-expensive MP3 player like the iPod.



    This also discounts the fact that many people share CDs with their SO in the same household, which cut drastically cut the per-person average collection size.

  • 1. If a Tall People's Rights representative said that Short People Kill, you would be able to pretend his statements were correct and harmless using the same flawed process you used in this post. And just like in this post, you would completely ignore the reason for the outrage. Tall People kill, too. They might even kill more often. The reason they weren't mentioned in the Tall People's Rights interview was calculated and misleading.



    2. You pretend that iPods are all full. That's flawed beyond repair.



    3. Making up numbers in order to support your hypothesis isn't the best way to illustrate your point. The average song is more than 3 minutes. The other magic numbers are just as flawed (with the exception of the 1MB/minute rule of thumb)



    You might as well say "look at the Wookie! That doesn't make sense!" as your argument. You'd fool about the same number of people.



  • Wookies? Where? Where?

  • Good luck. You opened one hell of a can with this one.



    I'm boring (and I bought the cheapest media portable media player I could buy that supported WMA), but I have to say that I own about 90% of my music legally.



    Most of the other stuff is international music that I like to try. I'm also guilty of downloading classical music off of the Internet because there's just so much of it. I usually give it about thirty seconds per piece to get me interested and then I delete it.

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