What is average size of a song?

Answer 1

Songs come in many different shapes and sizes. It all depends on the file format and the bitrate. I'm going to make a lot of assumptions here.

I'll assume you're asking about the MP3 file format at a constant (as opposed to variable, which is impossible to calculate for your question) bitrate of 128 kilobits/sec(kbps).

Depending on who you ask, 1 kb=1024 b or 1 kb=1000 b. In this case, it's the latter. Also keep in mind, there is added overhead in almost any music format. This overhead contains information about the file, but the added amount of size is almost negligible, especially when you talk about longer songs or songs at a higher bitrate.

With the above assumptions in mind, a 1 minute song would be about 940 kB. This remains pretty linear. A 2 minute song would be 1880 kB. A 3 minute song would be 2820. A song of x minutes in length would be x * 940 kB. To get it in MB, just divide by 1024. Keep in mind, this only holds true for songs encoded at 128 kbps. At a higher or lower bitrate, you'll need to tweak the formula included below.

For any math geniuses out there, that's:

[time in secs] * [bitrate in kbps] * [1000 b / 1 kb] * [1 B / 8 b] * [1 kB / 1024 B] * [1 MB / 1024 kB] = Size in MB

Simplified:

[bitrate in kbps] * 7500 / 1048576

[128] * 7500 / 1048576 = .92 MB + [overhead for the MP3 format].

That's about 940 kB / minute