14 DAY TRIAL // Apple announced yesterday that music lovers have bought and downloaded over 300 million songs from the iTunes Music Store.
But the service isn't only about making money and the best way to prove that was to offer exclusively the benefit single " Across the Universe," which debuted as number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart making it the most successful exclusive digital track ever in its first week of release.
But the iTunes success is the story here and competition as well as fans has to admit that the Apple music service is growing faster than anyone might have predicted even a few months ago.
The 100 million sold and downloaded tracks barriers has been broken on July 14, 2004, when the lucky buyer, Kevin Britten of Hays, Kansas downloaded Somersault.
Apple didn't wait long and rewarded that customer with a 17inch PowerBook, a 40Gb iPod and a gift certificate for 10,000 iTunes songs, which is not half bad for just downloading a music track off the net.
The whole thing was a marketing stunt, but it served to highlight just how popular music downloading had become in the US and how well iTunes was doing in particular.
The downloading frenzy continued and on Dec 16th, the 200 million song had been downloaded. The song was part of The Complete U2 and was purchased by Ryan Alekman from Belchertown, MA. "iTunes has now sold over 300 million songs, making it the world's number one online music store by far," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO.