I think my parents owned order magnitude 500 cds. Something like 150mb per album in mp3 format gets you to, what, ~75gig?
I doubt they were outliers? Nobody I know filled their players with itunes bought music, almost everyone was importing from physical back catalogues. I will concede that we did subsequently share our collections somewhat though...
Yeah, I spec'd 256kb/s to be conservative and to head off audiophiles screaming about 128kb/s MP3s at the pass, but 128kb/s is quite common, and turns 512GB into a year straight, 24/7, of music. I feel like that for all but basically a pathological pirate who is not listening to everything they're pirating at that point, this really ought to be enough that most people don't need to "subset" their collection for their phone anymore.
At my personal collection of 30GB, I don't need a server anymore, self-hosted or otherwise. I just put copies of it wherever I want it, and it's part of my backup set.
I doubt they were outliers? Nobody I know filled their players with itunes bought music, almost everyone was importing from physical back catalogues. I will concede that we did subsequently share our collections somewhat though...