German music fan Phillip Lupke has been awarded a 10,000 Euro iTunes gift card after purchasing the 25th billion song downloaded through the popular online music store. The 22-year-old student purchased the techno song ‘Monkey Drums (Goksel Vancin Remix)’ by British DJ Chase Butch earlier in the week, and was very surprised to hear about his contribution to this iTunes milestone.
‘I woke up this morning and had an email from Apple saying I had the 25 billionth download,’ he told Reuters. ‘In fact, I didn’t quite believe it at first. It’s a new feeling for me.’
Apple launched the iTunes store in 2003. Now in its 10th year, iTunes is estimated to sell around 15,000 songs per minute and has become the world’s most popular music store.
‘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,’ Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue said in a press release. ‘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.’
The iTunes store currently hosts over 26 million songs from 119 different countries. Tech Crunch has done the math on the store’s growth, revealing that if you were to average out the number of songs downloaded across the entire global population, ‘it’d come out to 3.57 songs per person, and 25 billion songs also adds up to a daily average of 7,002,585 songs downloaded per day over the 9 years, 9 months and 9 days of the iTunes Store’s existence.’
Interestingly, sales of iPods are actually decreasing although there were still over 32 million iPods sold last year as well as over 135 million iPhones.
‘In a lot of ways, iTunes has levelled the playing field for musicians,’ guitarist and lead vocalist of The Lumineers Wesley Schulz said. Whether you’re unsigned, indie, major, whatever – it’s the place most people go to buy digital music.’
This isn’t the first time Apple has decided to reward music fans for contributing to their downloading milestones.
Other songs which have earned a similar honour include Frank Sinatra’s ‘Let it Snow! Let it Snow’ (25 millionth song), Faith Hill’s ‘Mississippi Girl’ (500 millionth), Coldplay’s ‘Speed of Sound’ (1 billionth) and Johnny Cash’s ‘Guess Things Happen That Way’ (10 billionth).
