HOW MANY SONGS DOES A 30 GB REALLY STORE

As the other person said, check the format you are using. I have a couple of libraries over 1100 songs each. One is about 3.5 gb and the other is a little over 4 gb. Your 30 gb should hold somewhere around 8 to 10,000 songs.

Hi-how many songs does a 30 GB really
store--currently on approx. 1140 and I'm near half
way full--I am concerned I think perhaps I should
have gotten the 80GB

It varies depending upon the format of your digital song files. The advertised amounts are based upon 128 kbps AAC files--if you are using another size or compression type file, you will have different results. How much music do you have on your computer? If it's under 30 gb. you should be able to copy it all to your new iPod.

If you're worried about out-growing your iPod with new purchases, you could conserve space by using a different (smaller--but also lower quality) file format/compression method for future additions. Or, you could resign yourself to the fact that someday your music collection is going to exceed your iPod's capacity and you'll have to start making editing choices on what to include/not include.

Keep in mind that it is always possible to update the music on the player if you want fresher material! Just keep all your music on your computer and you can add and subtract at will on your iPod!

I have a 20gb ipod photo and i have 4253 songs at 128 kbps and it comes to 18.03gb so your 30gb should hold at least 8000 songs at that bitrate. Check that your not using apple lossless format to import cd's.

Also is there a way to buy songs from the iTunes Store in apple lossless?

Thanks

iPod 20GB Photo, Sony Vaio, Windows XP Media Center Edition

" Also is there a way to buy songs from the iTunes Store in apple lossless?"

Unfortunately no. That is one of the, several, complaints about the iTMS. First you have "protected" files that are not convertible to other formats (not directly anyway; you can burn to Audio CD then reimport), are not portable to other music players (again, not directly, work arounds exist), and to top it all off, they are advertised as "CD quality" but really you are buying a rather low bit rate for about the same as if you just went out and bought the physical CD instead. Of course, with CDs you can not buy just the tracks you want.
Hey maybe that is what Apple should do. Sell individual songs at 128kbps/MP4 but if you buy the full album you instead get 192+kbps/MP4s. Then you encourage the real audiophiles to buy albums, not singles. And artists can not complain that the iTMS method only sells their main hits and allowing users to not discover the other songs on their albums.
Patrick

I currently have 5345 songs on my 30G Ipod ripped AAC 192 KBS Fixed rate. I have about 2.5 Gig of room left if this helps you.

Interesting question, and good answers. With the compression I use (128k to 320k, averaging probably between 160k and 192k), I would be able to get a little less than 2,000 songs.