iTunes music : More then 10 billion songs downloaded!

More then 10 billion tracks have been downloaded from Apple iTunes, with this magical number being broken on Steve Jobs birthday.

Since the 11th of February, the largest music retailer in the United States has been on a quest to break through the ten billion downloaded tracks mark by organising a global competition. This symbolic number was broken yesterday and Apple addressed this by sending out "a billion thanks you’s. Ten times."

Originally launched in the USA in April 2003, the Apple online music store crossed their first billion downloads in February 2006. Five billion tracks were then passed in June 2008.

While iTunes has now diversified into TV programs and films in some countries, a major line was crossed in 2008 when iTunes adopted a model without DRM. This brought about the end to locked digital tracks imposed by record labels which were accompanied by unique pricing ($0.99). Tracks are now offered at $0.69, $0.99 and $1.29 with the same AAC encoding at 256 Kbit/s.

For their ten billionth download, iTunes provided a list of the twenty most downloaded tracks since the creation of the store, with the Black Eyed Peas and Lady GaGa taking the first three places.

The name of the competitions winner has not been released. As luck would have it, the magic number was passed on Steve Jobs 55th birthday!