Spotify's selection still pales before the personal and university libraries I've seen in my day.

The concept is a failure from the outset as the only recordings they can feature are commercially licensed tracks for which they could secure permission. That is a minuscule percentage of the available recordings out there.

If you don't have your own server and uncapped unlimited data, I suppose there is a convenience factor for which some would find Spotify satisfactory. But for archivists, historians, music scholars, completeists, and lunatic music fanatics, there are much better options available.

back in the day with aol proggie download chat rooms i had massive hours of songs.. ust a small hard drive.. ;:frowns:;

Which doesn't sound nearly as good as a CD. But it's what I got if I'm gonna be lazy haha

7.116 (50.5 GB) , not counting video game tunes and downloaded music videos.
Not a crazy amount compared to the average Musicbanter user I can see, but I would have had a lot more if I didn't delete all albums I don't own anymore. I tend to weed out my collection every once in a while since I feel like I can't realistically listen to hundreds and hundreds of albums.

I always rip my albums at max quality even though I'm too tin-eared to hear the difference. Go figure.

Well not all of us have the luxury of even knowing as much music as you do. So I'd say Spotify is good for the most part. It definitely has more than I'll ever listen to.

15k or so.

What bitrate do spotify and similar music services stream at?

I am looking at 39,382.

After the latest additions I now have 215,751 songs in my music folder.

Only 215 songs? I figured you would have a lot more than that.