Wednesday, February 24, 2010

iTunes Sells 10 Billion Songs

iTunes Sells 10 Billion Songs

Downloader who bought 10 billionth track wins a $10,000 iTunes gift card.
By Ryan J. Downey


iTunes hits ten billion sold
Photo: Apple

Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry helped drive sales of tracks on Apple's iTunes store past the 10 billion mark Wednesday (February 24). And the person who bought the 10 billionth track gets a $10,000 iTunes gift card.

The Black Eye Peas' "I Gotta Feeling" is the most-downloaded song on the store, with "Boom Boom Pow" landing at #3. Lady Gaga is the artist with the most songs toward the top, with "Poker Face" at #2, "Just Dance" at #6 and "Bad Romance" at #22. Other acts with tracks in the top 25 include Coldplay, Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Kings of Leon, the Fray and Owl City.

All of the top 25 tracks were released in the past five years (Ke$ha's "Tik Tok" is the newest at #10) except for one: "Don't Stop Believin'." Classic rockers Journey undoubtedly have "The Sopranos" and "Glee" to thank for renewed interest in the unstoppable song, first recorded in 1981, which landed at #21.

In 2006, Apple gave a gift card, 20-inch iMac, 10 60GB iPods and a music-school scholarship set up in the winner's name to the person who purchased the 1 billionth download. Apple's iTunes store was known as the iTunes Music Store when it launched less than seven years ago, prior to the addition of videos, movies and TV shows.

Onetime MTV News correspondent Iann Robinson helped introduce iTunes in an infomercial that ran in Apple stores and online back in the day. In it, Robinson explained what are now well-known concepts like single-track downloads, full-album purchases, free 30-second previews of songs, burning CDs and transferring to iPods.

"These are the people that changed my life with the simple invention of the iPod," he said in the six-minute-plus video. "Buy a song or a whole album. Either way, you get album art! Awesome!"

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