Thursday, May 31, 2012

Every song ever recorded on a thumbdrive

Just a little thought experiment, today.

According to a totally random page on the internet, there have been 623 million songs ever recorded.

I suspect this is somewhat high, but let's just run with it.

A typical song mp3 file is 5 megabytes in size.  5 x 623 million = 3115 million megabytes.  That's then call it 3.115 million gigabytes, or 3115 terabytes.

That's a lot of data.  But already, single terabyte drives are cheap at Wal-Mart, and if you've been awake for the last ten years you know that a 3115 terabyte thumb drive is something that will happen within our lifetimes...and probably not too far away.  I give it ten years.

So in ten years, you could have a USB type thumb drive with all recorded music ever made on it.

I'm pretty sure this being legal would necessitate the expansion of fair use to cover all non-commercial use.

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