iTunes Store: More than 3 billion songs served

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 01 August 2007 01:54

Business IT - Technology

Three billion songs is a lot of downloads, but that was the number accumulated by the iTunes Store by the end of July.

"We'd like to thank all of our customers who have contributed to this incredible milestone," said Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of iTunes.

The two billion mark was announced on January 9, which implies the store has been averaging nearly five million downloads per day since then. The first billion was racked up by February 23, 2006, giving an average of over 3.1 million songs per day between those dates. That's clearly a growth business.

The proportion of free downloads in this figures remains a mystery, as does the contribution of DRM-free songs from EMI.

In any case, the number of songs sold per iPod is still fairly small. In April, Apple announced the 100 millionth iPod had been sold. Assuming all are still in use, that's just 30 tracks per player. Hardware sales have grown strongly in recent years, so the number of devices retired is likely to be quite small. Add in a guesstimate of the number of songs purchased and only played on computers or burned to CD, and that 30 still seems plausible.

Earlier this year, the iTunes Store became the third largest music retailer in the US according to the NPD Group's MusicWatch survey, which normalises sales figures on the assumption that an average CD has 12 tracks, and does not include wireless sales.

The iTunes Store catalogue currently contains over five million songs, 550 TV shows and 500 movies, according to Apple officials.