diff --git a/src/config/PartitionConfig.cxx b/src/config/PartitionConfig.cxx
index d3f0182ff..5a275cdc2 100644
--- a/src/config/PartitionConfig.cxx
+++ b/src/config/PartitionConfig.cxx
@@ -10,4 +10,11 @@ PartitionConfig::PartitionConfig(const ConfigData &config)
 	queue.max_length =
 		config.GetPositive(ConfigOption::MAX_PLAYLIST_LENGTH,
 				   QueueConfig::DEFAULT_MAX_LENGTH);
+
+	if (queue.max_length > QueueConfig::MAX_MAX_LENGTH)
+		/* silently clip max_playlist_length to a resonable
+		   limit to avoid out-of-memory during startup (or
+		   worse, an integer overflow because the allocation
+		   size is larger than SIZE_MAX) */
+		queue.max_length = QueueConfig::MAX_MAX_LENGTH;
 }
diff --git a/src/config/QueueConfig.hxx b/src/config/QueueConfig.hxx
index 8d9183613..8766aa525 100644
--- a/src/config/QueueConfig.hxx
+++ b/src/config/QueueConfig.hxx
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@
 
 struct QueueConfig {
 	static constexpr unsigned DEFAULT_MAX_LENGTH = 16 * 1024;
+	static constexpr unsigned MAX_MAX_LENGTH = 16 * 1024 * 1024;
 
 	unsigned max_length = DEFAULT_MAX_LENGTH;
 };