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June 19, 2008

itunes_store

iTunes: Five billion and counting

Posted Jun. 19, ’08, 10:00 AM PT by Cyrus Farivar
Category | iTunes » iTunes Store

ituneshd.jpgMacworld reports that today Apple announced that the company has just sold its five billionth song. That’s a ridiculously huge number.

For those of you keeping score at home, Apple 2.0 notes that 4 bil hit last year (February 27, 2008); 3 bil on July 31 2007; 2 bil on January 6, 2007; and the first billion on February 23, 2006.

Since the iTunes store came out, I’ve spent, I’d guess, maybe $100 on there — largely on Blue Scholars albums and back episodes of This American Life.

Anyway, here’s to the next five billion! (Who wants to bet an iTunes track how long it will take to reach the 10 billion mark?)


1 Comments

wesg Author Profile Page said:

That is a huge number. Let's do some math and put that into perspective.

The store opened on April 28, 2003. Today is June 19, 2008, meaning 1879 days have passed according to this date calculator.

If each song has an average size of 4 MB, that means Apple has transferred
4 MB * 5 Billion = 20 Billion MB or 19,531,250 GB.

There are 162,345,600 seconds in that duration, meaning Apple transfers data at 0.12 GB or 120 MB/s. That's pretty serious bandwidth.

June 19, 2008 5:12 PM

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