iTunes MP3 downloads hit new 25 billion song sales milestone
Apple have revealed that their iTunes digital music storefront has hit another significant milestone, passing 25 billion song sales since it first opened for business a decade ago.
Working out at roughly 15,000 purchases a minute, the 25 billionth purchase was made by Phillip Lüpke in Germany, whose just bagged himself a 10,000 Euro (£8,644) iTunes gift card as a reward. If you’re interested, the tune he bought was Monkey Drums (Goksel Vancin Remix) by Chase Buch, which you can listen to here in a poorly recorded live gig video on YouTube.
“We are grateful to our users whose passion for music over the past 10 years has made iTunes the number one music retailer in the world,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services.
“Averaging over 15,000 songs downloaded per minute, the iTunes Store connects music fans with their favourite artists, including global sensations like Adele and Coldplay and new artists like The Lumineers, on a scale we never imagined possible.”
Even with the forward march of streaming services like Spotify and rival MP3 stores from Google and Amazon, it seems Apple’s iTunes is still the storefront of choice when it comes to actual digital purchases of songs.
When compared to streaming services, that’s great news for bands and artists – the water surrounding just how much artists get paid by streaming services is still murky, and the money made by sales of songs through iTunes is definitely higher than even many streams of a single tune through Spotify.
Apple also recently revamped the iTunes store for Mac and PC computers, bringing the desktop version up to iTunes 11. We shared our thoughts on the library and storefront in this post.
