I remember hearing one time that if you listen to a song over and over, you will eventually reach a threshold where you are “sick” of that song. Either you won’t hear it/register it while it is playing, or you will get annoyed and want to skip it. The number I remember being told was 42 or 46 times (don’t recall exactly).

I have about 300 songs on my BlackBerry right now, which I use when I go out jogging with my housemate’s pit bull. I also use it occasionally on the bus or BART when I want to listen to music, but I’m ignoring that for simplicity.

So I was wondering how long it will take until I get sick of all the songs I have on my BlackBerry. I don’t want to leave the house one day to find that I have to skip over every song on my BlackBerry.

So my calculation went like this:

300 songs

probably have listened to them at least 20 times already, assume 20 more good listens

each song probably averages about 3.5 minutes

So that means, I have about (300*20*3.5/60) = 350 hours of listening left before I am sick of every song, or just about a year of jogging with the dog. Seeing as I started this last September, I am approaching the threshold!

Time to reload/buy more songs.

Ahh, SCIENCE!!