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iTunes Music Store hits Billionth Download

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hitting-the-bigtime dept.

SirWraith writes "In case anyone hasn't realized Apple has had a counter going up to a billion for a few weeks now. Apparently last night, they hit the mark. From ABC News: 'Apple says Alex Ostrovsky from West Bloomfield, Mich., was the lucky audiophile who downloaded "Speed of Sound" by Brit pop band Coldplay, giving the Cupertino, Calif., company bragging rights to the 10-figure milestone. Thanks to a generous prize package from Apple, Ostrovsky will now use a $10,000 iTunes music card to keep those downloads flowing on his new 20-inch iMac computer, and listen to his favorite tunes on one of the 10 60GB iPods.'"

3 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Audiophile? by G�tz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think the term 'audiophile' does not fit here. Audiophiles buy expensive HiFi equipment and don't listen to 128kbit AAC from the Apple store. Especially as many people can hear the encoding artefacts on good equipment. But I must admit that I cannot hear the difference with the crappy earbuds that came with my iPod.

  2. Why does everyone focus on the iPods? by TCQuad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Beyond the iTMS certificate, the iPods and iMac, the prize includes a 4 year scholarship created in the winner's name to a "world renowned institute of music" selected by Apple. So, while all the loot he gets is nice, he's not the only winner. Actually, given the price of tuition, he's not even the biggest winner.

  3. Contribution of iTMS to iPod success seems small by adam1101 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Jobs anounced last month that they've sold 42 million iPods, so they've sold on average less than 24 songs per iPod. Even the lowest capacity Shuffle holds 120 songs. If we assume an average capacity of 2GB (500 songs) per iPod (the majority of sales are probably the cheaper low capacity units), less than 5% of the aggregate iPod capacity is filled with iTMS songs.

    This seems to contradict the oft repeated claims that the iPod ties you to iTMS, or that iTMS is a major contributor to the iPod's success.