Weight of a song (over time) — 21st Century Schizoid Man

I’ve been thinking about the weight of a song - this is a draft of my thoughts - corrections are welcome

The weight of a Song though history

How miniaturization of binary information and math has changed our world.

Feyman has a wonderful lecture called there’s plenty of room at the bottom. "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom: An Invitation to Enter a New Field of Physics" was a lecture given by physicist Richard Feynman at the annual American Physical Society meeting at Caltech on December 29, 1959.[1] - While this wasn’t really noticed at the time, it proved to be quite prophetic. Short answer - on a modern phone or laptop in 2022, a song might weigh as little as 60ug. The longer answer its below.

Song in your head, or sung out loud! (E.g. ???- I tend to sing “Everybody’s got something to hide ‘cept for me and my monkey – old example – “African honeyguide bird call”!) I am going to guess (Fermi estimate) that if you really tried and trained you could remember 1,000 songs. I don’t believe the number is 10,000 even for trained professionals and it is certainly more than 100. If anyone has actual data on this – perhaps through religious training, please let me know. Hartmann et al found that “The average brain weight of the adult male was 1336 gr; for the adult female 1198 gr.” Assuming an average of 1,267g we get 1.27g/song, and assuming 3 minute songs this is 0.422g/min. Your brain, of course, also remembers and does other things, but you can't separate out the song memory from those other things. (ref: Hartmann P, Ramseier A, Gudat F, Mihatsch MJ, Polasek W. Das Normgewicht des Gehirns beim Erwachsenen in Abhängigkeit von Alter, Geschlecht, Körpergrösse und Gewicht [Normal weight of the brain in adults in relation to age, sex, body height and weight]. Pathologe. 1994 Jun;15(3):165-70. German. doi: 10.1007/s002920050040. PMID: 8072950.)

Sketch of a song/sheet music (e.g. Oh Come All Ye Faithfull – Twisted Sister does a fun version, but I prefer Frank Sinatra’s) The most condensed full sheet music for songs that the most people would sing (at least in the English speaking religious world) is the New English Hymnal Full Music edition Hardcover – January 1, 1986, ISBN-10: 9780907547518, ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0907547518, Hardcover: 1312 pages, 1.45lbs (~658g), Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.51 x 41.42 x 8.66 inches, 1,312 pages, ~450 songs (includes lyrics melody and harmonies) = 1.46g/hymn or song, assuming a 3 minute hymn (no electric guitar solo) = 0.48g/min.The English Hymnal was first published in 1906. On the song – from Wikipedia: "O Come, All Ye Faithful" (originally written in Latin as "Adeste Fideles") is a Christmas carol that has been attributed to various authors, including John Francis Wade (1711–1786), John Reading(1645–1692), King John IV of Portugal (1604–1656), and anonymous Cistercian monks. The earliest printed version is in a book published by Wade.[1][2][3] A manuscript by Wade, dating to 1751, is held by Stonyhurst College in Lancashire.[4]

Player Piano Roll (e.g. Maple Leaf Rag, Scott Joplin,) – paper alone 60gsm (Grams per square meter paper) say 11.5 inches x 25 ft, or 3450sq inches or 2.23 m2. 134g per song, again assuming 4 mins/song, 33.5g/min. Wikipedia says “The first paper rolls were used commercially by Welte & Sons in their orchestrions beginning in 1883.[4]”

Analog: consumer formats.

7-inch 45rpm single (two songs, A side and B side) ~50g = 25g/song. Assuming a 5-minute song then 5g/min. (started in 1948) (Heartbreak Hotel – Elvis Presley)

12-inch 33rpm LP – 12 songs (6 songs per side) ~120g = 10g/song. Maximum ~22 minutes/side = ~2.7g/min. (also started in 1948) – (Michael Jackson – Thriller 1982 – hard to tell, but probably the best-selling album of all time, 9 songs 42 minutes.)

4 track cassette tape – ~32g usually 45 mins/side (90 minutes total) – up to 60 mins a side (120 minutes total) say 24 – 30 songs (2 x 15 song albums per side) = 1.1g/song. Or 0.27g/min. (introduced 1963) e.g. Enter The Wu-Tang - Wu-Tang Clan 9 songs – 36 minutes. – The Sony Walkman and the beatbox. Note: It is hard to pick a cassette tape album, because everything was also on LP – Thus I don’t want to pick Pink Floyds Dark Side of the Moon, as for me it is more of a LP at home kind of thing. Instead, I think ENTER THE WU-TANG better captures the boom box/walkman period that cassettes enabled)

Digital consumer formats.

Compact Disc (CD) usually 74 minutes max, 2 channel 16 bit 44.1KHz sampling ~16g. Most CDs had ~16 songs, so 1g/song or 0.22g/min. Introduced 1982. (The audio bit rate for a Red Book audio CD is 1,411,200 bits per second (1,411 kbit/s) or 176,400 bytes per second; 2 channels × 44,100 samples per second per channel × 16 bits per sample.) (e.g. Supernatural, Santana 1999)

Original ‘Classic’ apple iPod 5Gb, ~1000 songs (160kbit), ~4000 minutes 6.5oz, or ~184g. 0.18g (180mg)/song or 0.046g/min. introduced 2001. (At this point songs are becoming a format choice – At the introduction of the first ipod, the first Song Steve Jobs (briefly!) played in the demo was Building a Mystery, by Sarah McLachlan from the album Surfacing -1997, and Moby (The album was “Play” was featured in the ad.) Note this is a time before online downloadable music stores, so you had to “rip” songs to the computer, and then transfer to the iPod. Napster music file sharing between computers started in 1999 (There is interesting math in network effects here: https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-digit/submission/napster-the-start-of-something-big/), and the apple iTunes music store started in 2003.

Storage medium only 45.7 mm (1.8 in) hard drives (ATA-6, 4200 rpm with ZIF connectors) made by Toshiba probably ~62g – or 62mg/song or In 2009 the maximum capacity of the Toshiba 1.8 inch drive was 320Gb and weighed 62g (https://www.global.toshiba/ww/news/corporate/2009/11/pr0501.html -need to keep. Depending on format this could be 64000 songs ~256,000 minutes = 9.7mg/song or 242ug/min

iPod shuffle 4th generation released 2010 2Gb (3rd gen had a 4Gb option), weight 12.5g, ~400 songs ~1,600 minutes. = 31mg/song or 7.8mg/min

Moving to 2022 computer storage:

Desktop internal hard drive, Western digital gold 22Tbyte WD Gold WD221KRYZ 22TB 7200 RPM 512MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive – OEM. Data downloaded Aug 2022 Weight = ~670g – 4,400,000 songs, or 17,600,000 mins = 152ug/song, or 38ug/min.Dimensions:147mm x 101.6mm x 26.1mm = 389,808.7mm3 or ~0.09mm3 per song. Note 17,600,000 mins = ~33.5 years – or assuming 8 hours listening a day, a human lifetime of listening.

Desktop SSD Samsung 970 EVO Plus Series - 2TB PCIe NVMe 400,000 songs, 1,600,000 minutes First available June 2019, 1.9 oz, 53.9g = 134ug/song, or 33.7ug/min 0.87 x 0.9 x 3.15 inches (Is this the box? – seems it should be flatter?) Size is 40417.9 mm3 – so a song takes up ~0.1mm3 or 0.1ul

Storage Chip in a laptop I can’t get good data on the ram in the latest iPhone or on the M2 macbook e.g. How big/heavy is the SK Hynix HN3T1BA4GAX170 256 GB NAND flash memory found in Macbook Air M2. M2 chip area = ~ 155mm2 Based on a photo on ifixit tear down – the flash chip is about ½ the area of the M2 chip – so 75mm2 for 250Gb. How much does this weigh? - Silicon wafer density by google = 2330kg/m3 (Water is 1000kg/m3). – The silicon wafer probably weighs 0.5g based on this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafer_(electronics) – So adding everything else packaging and pins, lets say it weighs 3g ??? – 250Gb is 50,000 songs, 3g/50,000 songs = 60ug/song. Area is 0.0015mm2 (0.038mm x 0.038mm) per song. (Height is the thickness of the chip).

134ug/song is ~186,000 times lighter per song than your grandmothers Elvis Presley 1954 single Heartbreak Hotel.

Today we subscribe to music libraries, Apple music started in 2015, and in 2022 claims >90 million songs. Assuming the original compression scheme, the ~21 Hard Drives to store a single copy of 90 million songs could weigh as little as 13.7 kg (about the same weight as 114 LP records – many people have larger collections and need special shelving to hold their albums). Today the music file is stored in multiple higher quality formats, in multiple places around the world for rapid internet access, so it is obviously much more complicated. Oddly however, despite all this miniaturization, if you include all the packaging song “volumes” are still just about visible in 2022 – you can imagine a 0.1ul volume as a 1mm square that is 1/10th of a mm high, somewhere between the size of a pin head and an ants head. If you just look at chip area however, it is now going beyond the limits of unaided human vision.