Why did my mp3 player lie to me?

Question

It said that it can hold 20,000 songs, but I only have 2,250 & it's almost filled with songs already.

Answer 1

It depends on how long the songs are and how they are compressed. Less compressed songs are bigger on a hard drive and bigger songs of course take up more space. That space can also be affected by other information stored on there, like pictures, data, movies.

Did the MP3 player actually say it can hold 20,000 or did it say it could hold around that, or upto that many?

Answer 2

I assume there must be some "small print" somewhere associated with that statement. (Most such statements define an average 3 minute song length) Or did it use the famous weasel words of advertising: "up to..."

There are too many variables to make such a definite assertion:
- Length of the songs (I have one song that is 45 minutes!)
- Compression quality (bit-rate and sample rate)
- Apple uses AAC compresssion scheme for their numbers, since it is more effective (creates smaller files) than MP3

Answer 3

The number given is based on songs of a certain length and bitrate.

Longer songs/better quality = bigger file size = less songs.

Answer 4

i must ask, how could you have 2,250 songs on an mp3 player? Even an ipod! Maybe if it IS an ipod, part of the hard drive might be damaged so it does not read that. Thanks

Answer 5

If it has video on there it will hold A LOT bigger files then songs causing less songs then it says on there, same with pictures.

Answer 6

maybe it has pictures or videos on it that are taking up space (if new then they normally put commercials and crap like that in your videos folder)

also the length and quality of your songs will determine how much space they take up