My research shows the 85% average trend hasn't held for the last 3 years: http://www.mattscomputertrends.com/harddrives.html
It has been closer to 30%.
It also shows that the trend seems to be slowing down.
You are right. Paying double per gig doesnt seem like a rediculous premium for the drive.
It suprised me but your data doesnt show anything unusual.
New large drives have always been around twice the megsper $ figure of the drive in the sweet spot.
Well, acording to my research anyway: http://www.mattscomputertrends.com/harddiskdata.ht ml
I looked into this.
One online music store claimed to have over a million songs in its library. I take this to mean that if you were to collect the most popular 98% (number of sales wise)of all music then it would probably be less than 2 million songs.
2,000,000 * about 4 MB per song is 8 terabytes.
8 terabyte dives should be here in less than 10 years.
The encrypting of songs on the disk waiting for a purchased unlock code is actually fairly easy to manage to the satisfaction of the record industry.
The real problem is that a lot of the music market is made up of current music. I took a quick poll of my local record stores and they said about 60% of music sold is new, leaving on 40% of back catalog stuff to be found on the hard disk after just 1 year of ownership.
This means that even with a lot of music still on the drive most people will still have to download most music from the net. It also means you are probably wasting 8 gigs of storage capacity filled with encrypted music you cant access and are never going to buy.
"Hard disks will outpace NAND flash, both in terms capacity and $/GB.br>
My research shows this hasnt been the case for the last 3 years and I have reason to think the next 3 wont be any different.
I always thought the reasons flash was successful in small capacity MP3 players was that flash is much smaller than even the smallest hard disks, it uses less power thus reducing the size of the battery needed and has higher G shock tollerance. I guess another reason they are used is that hard disks lose their economic advantage when made in very small capacities, which is what you are saying.
Good post.
It doesnt make any mention of what Hard disks will do in the 2 to 5 year period.
You also chose the worst $per meg disk on the market.
Otherwise. I like your analysis.
It seems no one here is able to stick to one interpretation for Moores Law.
The original law related to increased transistor count for money per year. Here we have some people changing it to Mhz increase per year. Then they want to compare it to hard disk transfer speed increase per year while others are saying storage capacity (or density) per disk per year is more appropriate.
I think you are getting caught on the 128/sec / 1411/sec part.
This is the same as 128/sec * sec/1411. The seconds cancel each other out.
You are correct that I didnt write 1411.2 kb/sec. But I did write "1411.2 Kb (per sec". I'm still standing by the numbers. I know the equation wouldn't pass muster in a University exam, but this is slashdot, not University and the result of the calculation was the point of the post. The rest of the calculation was just included to show I didnt just make up the numbers.
I didnt pull the 128k figure out of my bum. Every major service selling music offers usually only 128kbit music. I put it to you that the "average" user doesnt care about sound quality as long as it is as good as FM rado quality. I ripped a same song in 128k aac and 320k aac and had a friend listen to both tracks and he couldnt tell the difference. I cant tell the difference. Most people cant tell the difference.
The fact is that 90% of the market just dont care.
If you can tell the difference then you have the gift of good hearing. I hope it allows you to appreciate your music to a level more than I can. But you are not the average person. Your comment represents a part of the market that is anything but average.
"10G strikes me as too small for a regular music collection."
Actually, 10 gig is almost exactly the size of average music collection when stored in 128kbit compressed format. This BBC article shows that men own, on average, 178 albums (women, on average, own less). http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/410 2786.stm
178 (albums) * 650MB (maximum data per album) * 128 Kb/sec (good quality compression rate) / 1411.2 Kb (per sec data rate e on the CD) = 10493.5 MB. This is over just 10 GB to store the average mans music collection.
I totally agree with your sentiment but you maths seems a small bit off.
128kbits per second is 16k per second.
16k * 3600 seconds is 57600k/hr or 57.6 megs per hour.
57.6 * 16 (waking) hours is 921 megs per day. Or about 0.9 gigs per day.
365 days *.9 is 328 gigs per year.
6 gigs divided by 0.328 gives just over 18 years.
Now, I plan to live at least to 80 so maybe I'm in the market for a 15 terabyte iPod instead (note that I'm already 34). Young buyers that want lossless sound quality should be looking for an 80 terabyte model.
Clearly, you do not make up the 90% of the market to which I was refering. It would be nice if there were a lot more people that valued lossless music like you.
Even so, if your colletion makes up only 500 albums then your storage requirements are 45 gigs of mp3's plus about 200 gigs of flac.
I stand by comment that music is no longer a driver for hard drive growth.
But video, thats a different story.
So true.
One bad thing is that the growth of large drives seems to have slowed down dramtically in the last few years and as a consequence the improvment in bang per buck of "normal" drives has also slowed down.
One idea would be to have only 1000 different versions of the encrypted content instead of a unique one for each client. Then randomly put one version on the player. That way if someone publishes a key it is only one is a thousand people that can use it. If someone starts a dastbase of keys then you sue to take it down and, if you need to, you put out yet another 1000 different versions. Easy.
I can think of about 3 ways of doing it so that breaking it would be the equivalent of breaking EAS or RSA. If EAS or RSA get broken then we will have more to worry about than the music industies problems.
I'm with the grandparent. When storage capacity becomes big enought to hold all of the back catalog then it might make business sense to do so. There is no technical problem with it.
Sorry for a second reply but I just noticed this:
"We'll see how Moore's Law pans out... but there is a limit, eventually, with our data (although not for a while) and our ability to fill drives."
Moores law for hard disks is called Kryders law and Kryders Law, is already broken.
Yes 60MB disks were shiped when 750 MB drives were new to the market. It happened in 1994. Actually, it seems 1.4 Gig drives were shiping concurrently with 40 MB drives
I beleive it is a myth to think that MP3's will be driving any increased need for storage anymore.
This BBC article, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/410 2786.stm, says that men own, on average, 178 albums (women, on average, own less) with less than 10% of men owning 500 or more. Lets do some calculations to determine what the average and then the 90th percentile need for storage could be.
500 (albums) * 650MB (data per album) * 192 Kb/sec (compressed data rate) / 1411.2 Kb (per sec rate on the CD) = 44220.8 MB. This means 90% of the market can store their entire music collection on a 45 Gig Drive.
With 750 gig personal computer disks soon available, we are past the point where music is a storage need driver.
"You can use new technology as an opportunity to improve the operation of your business."
There was a time when the word opportunity was a management buzword. I still hate the word. It seems to have become part of the business vocabulary even of people that hate corporate speak. Look:
"You can use new technology to improve the operation of your business."
Take the word out and the sentence has lost no meaning. That should be the definition of corporate speak.
Witty or sensational headlines don't just deceive search engines.
Human readers can get fooled just as easily. Heres an example:
I was doing research to show that Kryder's Law (a kind of super Moore's Law for hard disks that says bit densities have increased factor of 1000 in 10.5 years meaning a doubling every 13 months) is no longer being achieved by hard drive manufacturers. Instead I discovered that Kryders Law was just a creation of Wikipedia's overenthusiastic editors that misinterpreted a single Scientific American headline. Wikipedia editors accidentally invented the "law", and it isn't even correct.
I used to work for BHP (now Billiton) at the Slab and Plate product division. I worked in PC support and so didnt actually know much about the steel making. One day I had to visit the BOS (I stil dont know what it stands for), it was the area where they stored the slabs after they were poored. I got out of my car and was hit by a stifulling heat but I couldnt tell where it was comming from. I looked around and 40 meters away was a large slab, cooling in a neaby fenced yard. It was barely glowing red.
If a light sabre is say, twice as hot as that then I dont care how small the sureface area is you are going to notice it if its less than 1 meter from you.
Can you provide the link for the Economist article. This is an area of interest for me.
My own research shows the opposite is happening. Flash is charging hard after disk and the rate it is catching up is accelerating. http://www.mattscomputertrends.com/flashvsharddisk .html
I am due to update this years figures but a quick analysis shows the trend is continuing.
Slashdot Mirror
My research shows the 85% average trend hasn't held for the last 3 years:l
http://www.mattscomputertrends.com/harddrives.htm
It has been closer to 30%.
It also shows that the trend seems to be slowing down.
You are right. Paying double per gig doesnt seem like a rediculous premium for the drive.t ml
It suprised me but your data doesnt show anything unusual. New large drives have always been around twice the megsper $ figure of the drive in the sweet spot.
Well, acording to my research anyway:
http://www.mattscomputertrends.com/harddiskdata.h
I looked into this.
One online music store claimed to have over a million songs in its library. I take this to mean that if you were to collect the most popular 98% (number of sales wise)of all music then it would probably be less than 2 million songs.
2,000,000 * about 4 MB per song is 8 terabytes.
8 terabyte dives should be here in less than 10 years.
The encrypting of songs on the disk waiting for a purchased unlock code is actually fairly easy to manage to the satisfaction of the record industry.
The real problem is that a lot of the music market is made up of current music. I took a quick poll of my local record stores and they said about 60% of music sold is new, leaving on 40% of back catalog stuff to be found on the hard disk after just 1 year of ownership.
This means that even with a lot of music still on the drive most people will still have to download most music from the net. It also means you are probably wasting 8 gigs of storage capacity filled with encrypted music you cant access and are never going to buy.
If Apple cant redesign the iPod to have a removable battery and also make it look good then no-one can.
"Hard disks will outpace NAND flash, both in terms capacity and $/GB.br>
My research shows this hasnt been the case for the last 3 years and I have reason to think the next 3 wont be any different.
I always thought the reasons flash was successful in small capacity MP3 players was that flash is much smaller than even the smallest hard disks, it uses less power thus reducing the size of the battery needed and has higher G shock tollerance. I guess another reason they are used is that hard disks lose their economic advantage when made in very small capacities, which is what you are saying.
Good post.
It doesnt make any mention of what Hard disks will do in the 2 to 5 year period.
You also chose the worst $per meg disk on the market.
Otherwise. I like your analysis.
It seems no one here is able to stick to one interpretation for Moores Law.
The original law related to increased transistor count for money per year. Here we have some people changing it to Mhz increase per year. Then they want to compare it to hard disk transfer speed increase per year while others are saying storage capacity (or density) per disk per year is more appropriate.
No wonder there is so little agreement.
I think you are getting caught on the 128/sec / 1411/sec part.
This is the same as 128/sec * sec/1411. The seconds cancel each other out. You are correct that I didnt write 1411.2 kb/sec. But I did write "1411.2 Kb (per sec". I'm still standing by the numbers. I know the equation wouldn't pass muster in a University exam, but this is slashdot, not University and the result of the calculation was the point of the post. The rest of the calculation was just included to show I didnt just make up the numbers.
OK, I'll bite.
I didnt pull the 128k figure out of my bum. Every major service selling music offers usually only 128kbit music. I put it to you that the "average" user doesnt care about sound quality as long as it is as good as FM rado quality. I ripped a same song in 128k aac and 320k aac and had a friend listen to both tracks and he couldnt tell the difference. I cant tell the difference. Most people cant tell the difference.
The fact is that 90% of the market just dont care.
If you can tell the difference then you have the gift of good hearing. I hope it allows you to appreciate your music to a level more than I can. But you are not the average person. Your comment represents a part of the market that is anything but average.
"10G strikes me as too small for a regular music collection."
0 2786.stm
Actually, 10 gig is almost exactly the size of average music collection when stored in 128kbit compressed format. This BBC article shows that men own, on average, 178 albums (women, on average, own less).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/41
178 (albums) * 650MB (maximum data per album) * 128 Kb/sec (good quality compression rate) / 1411.2 Kb (per sec data rate e on the CD) = 10493.5 MB. This is over just 10 GB to store the average mans music collection.
I totally agree with your sentiment but you maths seems a small bit off.
.9 is 328 gigs per year.
128kbits per second is 16k per second.
16k * 3600 seconds is 57600k/hr or 57.6 megs per hour.
57.6 * 16 (waking) hours is 921 megs per day. Or about 0.9 gigs per day.
365 days *
6 gigs divided by 0.328 gives just over 18 years.
Now, I plan to live at least to 80 so maybe I'm in the market for a 15 terabyte iPod instead (note that I'm already 34). Young buyers that want lossless sound quality should be looking for an 80 terabyte model.
Clearly, you do not make up the 90% of the market to which I was refering. It would be nice if there were a lot more people that valued lossless music like you.
Even so, if your colletion makes up only 500 albums then your storage requirements are 45 gigs of mp3's plus about 200 gigs of flac.
I stand by comment that music is no longer a driver for hard drive growth.
But video, thats a different story.
So true.
l
One bad thing is that the growth of large drives seems to have slowed down dramtically in the last few years and as a consequence the improvment in bang per buck of "normal" drives has also slowed down.
I've been studying this for a while now. You can see the trend for youself at my site, http://www.mattscomputertrends.com/harddrives.htm
You are someone who gets it.
One idea would be to have only 1000 different versions of the encrypted content instead of a unique one for each client. Then randomly put one version on the player. That way if someone publishes a key it is only one is a thousand people that can use it. If someone starts a dastbase of keys then you sue to take it down and, if you need to, you put out yet another 1000 different versions. Easy.
I can think of about 3 ways of doing it so that breaking it would be the equivalent of breaking EAS or RSA. If EAS or RSA get broken then we will have more to worry about than the music industies problems.
I'm with the grandparent. When storage capacity becomes big enought to hold all of the back catalog then it might make business sense to do so. There is no technical problem with it.
Sorry for a second reply but I just noticed this:
"We'll see how Moore's Law pans out... but there is a limit, eventually, with our data (although not for a while) and our ability to fill drives."
Moores law for hard disks is called Kryders law and Kryders Law, is already broken.
Yes 60MB disks were shiped when 750 MB drives were new to the market. It happened in 1994. Actually, it seems 1.4 Gig drives were shiping concurrently with 40 MB drives
t ml
Source, my site, here: http://www.mattscomputertrends.com/harddiskdata.h
I beleive it is a myth to think that MP3's will be driving any increased need for storage anymore.
0 2786.stm, says that men own, on average, 178 albums (women, on average, own less) with less than 10% of men owning 500 or more. Lets do some calculations to determine what the average and then the 90th percentile need for storage could be.
This BBC article, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/41
500 (albums) * 650MB (data per album) * 192 Kb/sec (compressed data rate) / 1411.2 Kb (per sec rate on the CD) = 44220.8 MB. This means 90% of the market can store their entire music collection on a 45 Gig Drive.
With 750 gig personal computer disks soon available, we are past the point where music is a storage need driver.
Maybe you have a different definition of the word "can" to me.
If it helps, substitute "might" or "may".
"You can use new technology as an opportunity to improve the operation of your business."
There was a time when the word opportunity was a management buzword. I still hate the word. It seems to have become part of the business vocabulary even of people that hate corporate speak. Look:
"You can use new technology to improve the operation of your business."
Take the word out and the sentence has lost no meaning. That should be the definition of corporate speak.
Please go right ahead.
My criticism isnt of Wikipedia. Its of bad headlines that mislead.
"Some formulation of the hard disk law has been around long before the SciAm article"
Yes, and that law was called Moore's Law. I think the role of an encyclopedia is to document, not invent.
Witty or sensational headlines don't just deceive search engines.
Human readers can get fooled just as easily. Heres an example:
I was doing research to show that Kryder's Law (a kind of super Moore's Law for hard disks that says bit densities have increased factor of 1000 in 10.5 years meaning a doubling every 13 months) is no longer being achieved by hard drive manufacturers. Instead I discovered that Kryders Law was just a creation of Wikipedia's overenthusiastic editors that misinterpreted a single Scientific American headline. Wikipedia editors accidentally invented the "law", and it isn't even correct.
You can read about it at my site here: http://www.mattscomputertrends.com/Kryder's.html
The search engines are dong us all a favor getting rid of this problem.
I used to work for BHP (now Billiton) at the Slab and Plate product division. I worked in PC support and so didnt actually know much about the steel making. One day I had to visit the BOS (I stil dont know what it stands for), it was the area where they stored the slabs after they were poored. I got out of my car and was hit by a stifulling heat but I couldnt tell where it was comming from. I looked around and 40 meters away was a large slab, cooling in a neaby fenced yard. It was barely glowing red.
If a light sabre is say, twice as hot as that then I dont care how small the sureface area is you are going to notice it if its less than 1 meter from you.
Can you provide the link for the Economist article. This is an area of interest for me.k .html
My own research shows the opposite is happening. Flash is charging hard after disk and the rate it is catching up is accelerating.
http://www.mattscomputertrends.com/flashvsharddis
I am due to update this years figures but a quick analysis shows the trend is continuing.