According to the Title Text (hover your mouse over the comic to read it), the entire iTunes music library could fit in a soda can’s worth of Micro SD cards. Could it really?

The numbers:

  • Micro SD cards measure 15 mm x 11 mm x 1 mm.
  • Soda cans have a diameter of approximately 65 mm.
  • iTunes Store catalog has more than 10^6 songs. (This figure does not include podcasts and video.)

The computations:

Each Micro SD card has a volume of 15mm x 11mm x 1mm = 165 mm^3.

Each soda can has a volume of 12 fluid ounces. Google tells me 165 mm^3 in ounces is 0.00557931375, meaning 2150 Micro SD cards could fit in a 12 ounce container. Allowing for the fact a Micro SD card is rigid and a mess of ’em won’t completely fill a soda can, let’s round that down to 2000 Micro SD cards.

Micro SD cards come in sizes up to 32 GB. 32 GB * 2000 = 64,000 Gigabytes. There are 10^3 Gigabytes in a Terabyte, so that’s 64 Terabytes of storage in a single soda can.

Songs in iTunes are around 4 Megabytes in size. 64 Terabytes / 4 Megabytes = 16,777,216 songs.

Given that the iTunes library worldwide has 10 million songs and 16 million could fit in a soda can, the comic’s claim seems to hold.

Cool!