How big is your playlist?

My what?
I don't have a "playlist", but I do have a few hundred CDs.
I have bands that I listen to and I tend to play their entire discography before moving onto another band.
I'm currently listening to Gary Glitter in the car (although I confess it's the Ai instrumentals I made for myself!).
No idea who I'll listen to next. It all depends on how I feel when I've finished off the last CD.

6840 songs currently on my playlist.

Yup, I do the same. Get a new album, find time to listen to it properly, then decide which (if any) tracks get onto the playlist. I also EQ everything before it goes on my phone, so there's no wild volume surges, and bass and treble are made fairly consistent.

Occasionally, if it's an album by a favourite artist that I know I will like (or get to like), the whole thing gets chucked onto the playlist, then if I do find it's terrible, I remove the entire album from the library, which also removes it from the playlist.

I also embed the artwork, but I'll admit to converting everything to AAC first in iTunes, otherwise I'd run out of space on my phone fairly quickly if everything was at the highest resolution.

I've also got loads of other stuff on my phone, that isn't on the permanent playlist, totalling nearly 12,000 tracks (690 albums), so I do need to conserve storage space and occasionally have a purge of stuff I have no intention of listening to again.

I have a vague pass at that, but I think I need to run some sort of "ReplayGain" process on everything pre-existing to get to a baseline.

Classical stuff is a real problem, as some of it has SUCH quiet bits.  Bolero can be on for 6 minutes in the car before I even hear anything.

Yup, very annoying, that. I clung on to my Samsung Galaxy S10+ for as long as possible, but eventually it stopped receiving OS updates, and after a couple of drops, one resulting in a cracked back, (the phone, not me picking it up), I succumbed to an S22+ with 256Gb of internal storage, of which about 82% is in use. It took about 3½ hours to transfer all the music from the old SD card to the new phone, and that was via the PC as I always keep a backup of my phone music.

I kept looking at the Sony Xperia, partly because I'd had three Samsungs in a row and fancied a change, and it certainly would have solved the issue of the SD card removal on the Samsungs, but I'd read mixed reviews, and wasn't convinced I'd get on with the taller, narrower body on the Sony.

I'd be interested to hear what the on board OS is like on the Sony. Does it have it's own apps (email, messaging, music, etc) or does it rely on Google's own apps?

Thanks, that's really useful. It's hard to know what else to choose when you fancy a change but have been with the same brand for several models. My first Samaung was the S7, and that replaced an iPhone. I've never gone back, partly as to go back now would be too much hassle, and I wouldn't be able to get the same music apps on Apple.

I did look at the OnePlus 10 Pro, which apparently has an excellent camera (Hasselblad), and is slightly cheaper than the Samsungs, but it didn't really seem to have any other advantages so I decided to stick to what I know. Hopefully this S22+ will last me a few years.

Sadly, I can't see SD cards trending back in, as everything seems to be moving towards streaming, but now I've made that leap to internal storage, at least that's one factor not to have to worry about next time.

Everything is stored using iTunes on the PC, and backed up at least twice. The tags are also applied in iTunes before transferring tracks to the phone.

It was almost a full time job for a while, but I don't buy many new albums these days, as there's not really much that interests me, so it doesn't take up too much time now.

I forgot to mention that I also split and edit tracks that segue or merge into one another, as best as possible, as I have the playlist on shuffle and I don't like tracks being suddenly cut without a clean ending. If it's an album where all the tracks run into each other, such as with some of the proggy stuff I'm into, then I do it in sections, separating at the most convenient points, then tagging each section as one track. That's what can take the most time.

With the Queen stuff I've either used the single mixes to make stand alone versions (eg, Flick Of The Wrist, Lily Of The Valley), or some of the various stand alone mixes that have appeared via the likes of CMatt and CMI. I don't actually have all the complete Queen albums on my phone, as I've heard them all so much that I tend to be more selective, and it leaves space for other stuff. I've got two home made Queen compilations, featuring 108 tracks, which are all in the playlist.

Ooh, stats! 😄

Queen - 108
Brian - 22
Roger - 17 (new live album yet to be processed)
Q+AL - 8
Freddie - 2
Fred / Mons - 1
Q+PR - 1

Not sure I've got the mathematical aptitude to work out the percentages! 🤣

I must be the only codger that does not have a playlist.

Will I get banned for spouting significant F values when I reject the null hypothesis?

I got around 1,709 in my Spotify, split across several playlists. I got them separated as these: The chill stuff (anything that isn't metal or hard rock), The metal stuff, Motown & soul, Country (it was a short phase lol), Electronic, Prog, The Beatles, and lastly Queen (appropriately, I called the last one The Royal Playlist).

Interesting. How many CDs are in your car at any given time?

More stats:

The 3650 songs on my playlist include 2000 UK Top 40 hits, of which 379 were Number 1s. The number 1s cover every year from 1956 to 2002 (and a small handful of other years, latest being 2015).

I have to keep a vague eye out for old hits suddenly returning to the charts and getting higher than originally - there's a fair bit of attention when Kate Bush gets to #1, but when Zeppelin sneak into the lower half of the singles chart based on streams....