What is the lifespan of memory sticks used for MP3 Players?

a long long time. most of the music on my mp3 player is on my 16gb microsd. as the player itself is only 4gb. i play exclusively lossless music (.flac.alac.wav etc.). and have had no problems for a while.

your mp3 player works on the same principles as those cards anyway right? solid state drive can only be copied over so many times before it's all used up. but thats many many many hours/days/months/years before you will (use up) your sd card playing music. it'll do just fine.

It will last until you corrupt it...

Typically happens when you disconnect the power to the reader when it's reading data or writing data. Which means... if your MP3 gets shutdown abruptly (run out of battery?) or you pull the card reader out of your PC or the USB port when it's reading/writing data, then you increase the risks of corrupting the card. Otherwise, it should last as long as you're still fond of the MP3 player.

Unless you completely erase your MP3 player and fill it up everyday you won't have anything to worry about.

right. and even still it might take a few hundred thousand or even a mliiion times doing that.

I have a better strategy for this. Do not delete anything and keep adding your files instead of replacing or deleting files on the MicroSD. This strategy ensures that you use all the blocks (No wasted free space) instead of oppressing few blocks and thus made them corrupted. Keep adding files till it becomes full then start to do your own replacing and deleting.

Also try replacing and deleting on the computer hard drive, meaning you make an image of the files that are on the MicroSD then do the work on the HD then bring it back to the MicroSD.