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  • How many songs can I put on my Sony PSP?

How many songs can I put on my Sony PSP?

May 15, 2006 / Dave Taylor / iPod & MP3 Player Help / 14 Comments

Dave, I just wanted to know how many songs does a PSP 2G memory card hold? I want to buy a good one that holds a lot of music so I can listen to whatever I want on my Sony PSP when I’m out of the house.

This is a common question here, though the exact form of it varies. Sometimes I see “how many CDs can I put on my Sony PSP” and sometimes it’s even “how many photos can my PSP hold?”
The first, and most obvious answer, is that it depends on the size of the Memory Stick Duo device you buy. The PSP ships with a ridiculously small 32MB memory device that is barely enough for game saves, but certainly doesn’t let you play with much music, photos or any downloaded video at all.
I have two 2GB Memory Sticks for my PSP, actually, and I can tell you that if I don’t use it for anything other than game saves, I can download and store three feature-length movies using the method detailed in the article Copy DVDs onto your Sony PSP. Each is about 600MB.
Further, it’s important to know that the listed capacity is never really the actual capacity, because the formatting of the device eats up about 8-12% of the space. So a 512MB Memory Stick for the PSP is really going to give you about 480MB of space, and so on. Nothing you can do about it, it’s the same reason that your 20GB disk on your computer only actually has 19.2GB or similar. Just the way it is.
Now, let’s talk about music. Just as a relatively random choice, I’ll pull up the set of songs from Kate Bush’s terrific album Aerial. I ripped the song with good, but not the very best possible audio encoding (since I have the master CD on my shelf anyway) and here’s what I have as a result:

Title Duration File Size
King of the Mountain 4:53 7.0MB
Pi 6:09 8.8MB
Bertie 4:18 5.9MB
Mrs. Bartolozzi 5:59 7.0MB
How to be Invisible 5:32 7.8MB
Joanni 4:56 7.1MB
A Coral Room 6:12 7.8MB


Add it all up and this is one CD, approximately 40 minutes of music, with a total combined file size of just over 51MB.
Now do the math. If you have a 2GB Memory Stick and you’re actually going to only get 1.8GB of useable space, you therefore have 1843MB of space. Divide by 50MB and that means I could put 36 copies of this particular CD on the device. Of course, if I wanted to leave just a wee bit of space for game saves, maybe 35 would be a better number.
Now, imagine you have just bought a 512MB memory stick with visions of having it compete with your pal’s shiny new Apple iPod nano. Ah, well, 512MB can only hold 10 CDs, so it’ll be iPod: 1, PSP: 0 in that particular case.
Hope all of this explanation helps you figure out how much space you will have on your new 2GB memory stick for your Sony PSP!

About the Author: Dave Taylor has been involved with the online world since the early days of the Internet. Author of over 20 technical books, he runs the popular AskDaveTaylor.com tech help site. You can also find his gadget reviews on YouTube and chat with him on Twitter as @DaveTaylor.

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Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!
mp3 file size, music on psp, psp help, sony psp

14 comments on “How many songs can I put on my Sony PSP?”

  1. Zach says:
    March 21, 2011 at 7:30 am

    Would this work? if i bought a 2 GB stick for each purpose 1 for Music 1 for games and 1 for movies would that work? when i want to listen to music i put in the music stick? would that work

    Reply
  2. Christina says:
    May 18, 2008 at 7:24 am

    What happens if my memory card is only 32 mb but for my music,games,and pictures it says that the Free Space Is 1680 but how come i can’t put anything else on it ?

    Reply
  3. narasimha says:
    February 14, 2008 at 7:46 am

    dear sir ! i need the following information how many photoes can we put in 1GB MEMORY? ;HOW MANY SONGS CAN WE RECORD IN 1GB? ; how many pictures can we download in 1GB memory ?

    Reply
  4. sheakllr says:
    February 4, 2008 at 11:14 am

    Well, when i transfer music to my psp i cant see all the music that i just put on. It will only hold a certin amount not the amount that i just transferd. I have a 4gb in the psp so i dont see why it wont hold a lot of music. what am i doing wrong?

    Reply
  5. hawsar says:
    December 20, 2007 at 12:22 pm

    HOW COME I ONLY CAN PUT 2 SONGS ON MY PSP I ONLY HAVE 2496 KB? HOW MANY SONGS CAN I PUT WITH 2496 KB?
    I NEED HELP REPLAY TO ME WITH MY EMAIL

    Reply
  6. austin says:
    July 18, 2007 at 9:20 am

    do you have to have wipout to put internet on your psp

    Reply
  7. jake says:
    April 9, 2007 at 7:17 pm

    I just bought a new PSP, due to my other one breaking, and i was just wondering if they will come out with a bigger memory stick other than just 8GB. Also will they make a San Disk one thats cheap because i was price comparing and Sony is doubling the price of San Disk.

    Reply
  8. Josh says:
    January 1, 2007 at 1:29 pm

    i have a 1gb memory stick and i put 1 cd with 18 songs onto it and it took up half of my memory. why is this?

    Reply
  9. Dave Taylor says:
    November 20, 2006 at 8:30 pm

    Well, 512MB holds 10 CDs, so 1GB will hold about 20 CDs, plus or minus a few, and in terms of video, well, the average two hour DVD converted to an attractive PSP format is about 400-450MB. Some of ’em come in longer: Mission Impossible III was over 500MB when I converted it. Hope that’s helpful
    Tip: Want to know how to convert DVDs into stunning PSP video that you can download onto your unit without having to buy a crazy UMD disk? Check this out:
    https://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_can_i_copy_dvd_movies_to_my_sony_psp.html

    Reply
  10. Jack Foltowski says:
    November 20, 2006 at 8:05 pm

    hey dave jack here i was wondering how many songs/movies/hours of videos a 1gb memory stick duo can hold?

    Reply
  11. MICHEAL URITA says:
    October 2, 2006 at 4:20 pm

    do you think the new psp bundle{psp,atv off road fury blazin,a movie, 1gb meORY CARD}?
    HOW MUCH DOES THE 1gb memory card holds?
    which iz better 1gb or 32mb??????????????????
    PLEAZE HELP B4 I PICK THA WRONG CHOICE

    Reply
  12. Christopher Cid says:
    September 8, 2006 at 12:35 pm

    Dave, i recently bought a psp which i’am starting to regret because trying to save music and videos to my 1 gb memory stick duo is a major hassel. i have one question what is a access point and where could i get one?

    Reply
  13. Chance says:
    September 2, 2006 at 8:18 am

    I have a 1GB memory stick for my PSP and have so far copied a lot of music to it. I currently have around 120 songs on it total and with this amount the PSP has a problem with the traditional number system after 99. How can I fix it so that song #102 and others like it don’t show up at #11 on my list, in other words, how do I get them to go to their respective slots in the playlist?

    Reply
  14. phil says:
    May 21, 2006 at 12:49 pm

    dave, i cant get music on my psp becuase i cant get the folder when you first put your usb cable in, (it just says new hardware found and i cant click on it becuase it wont let me).

    Reply

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