Five billion iTunes served

Stephen Withers
Friday, 20 June 2008 04:29

Business IT - Technology

Apple's market-leading iTunes Store has hit a new milestone: over five billion songs have now been purchased.

The integration between the company's hugely popular iPods, iTunes software running on Macs and PCs and the online iTunes Store simplified the purchase and use of music by ordinary consumers in a way still not truly comprehended by people who want their music players to behave like a regular storage device.

While Apple isn't saying anything about current music purchase rates, the three billion point was reached less than eleven months ago. That's over six million songs per day, a quarter of a million an hour, or around 4300 per minute.

Small wonder that the iTunes Store has become the biggest music retailer in the US.

Even though the iTunes Store was the first online music retailer to introduce DRM-free songs from a major label (EMI) in May 2007, other music industry heavyweights have shut out Apple from similar arrangements they have made with other online music retailers such as Amazon. Universal even went so far as to terminate its long-term relationship with Apple, moving instead to a month by month arrangement.

However, the attempt to dent the market dominance has obviously failed as iTunes sales continue to soar.

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