Apple announces 25 billion iTunes songs sold

iTunes 11 (expanded music view)

Just in time for Valentine’s Day $0.69 love music sale, Apple this morning issued a press release announcing that music lovers have downloaded more than 25 billion songs from the iTunes Store. The company’s song sales now average to 15,000 tracks downloaded per minute. The iTunes Store opened for business on April 28, 2003 and its catalog is now over 26 million songs strong. Remember that it was only back in September 2012 that Apple announced 20 billion iTunes song purchases.

With the recent addition of 56 new markets, music on iTunes is now available for sale in 119 countries. And with the recent Apple TV 5.2 software update, owners of Apple’s $99 set-top box can now see upcoming songs when playing music, choose what plays next and access their previously purchased songs from iCloud, right on their television set…

The milestone was communicated via a media release which quotes Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services and the company’s Mr. Fixer.

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.

Averaging over 15,000 songs downloaded per minute, the iTunes Store connects music fans with their favorite artists, including global sensations like Adele and Coldplay and new artists like The Lumineers, on a scale we never imagined possible.

MacStories did some basic math by dividing 25 billion downloads with the 3572 days since the iTunes Store’s inception to come up with these averages: 6.99 million downloads per day, 81 downloads per second and 4860 downloads per minute.

iTunes download totals by medium (Asymco, 20130206)
Chart via Asymco.

The Wall Street Journal yesterday noted that Apple’s PR is on the offensive amid increased competition.

While a milestone like 25 billion digital song sales does warrant a press release, the article points out that last week’s iOS 6.1 release marked “the first time Apple has issued an official press release for a non-major mobile software release unrelated to a new device since 2010″.

Via the recently released evasi0n jailbreak, some people dug up interesting code references on jailbroken iPads, with placeholders and icons for what looks to be a streaming radio-like iTunes service.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on this Pandora-like project in September 2012. Both The New York Times and Bloomberg later corroborated the story, citing their own sources.

Speaking of which, do you still buy individual tracks on iTunes/Amazon or have you moved on to Spotify, Rdio, Pandora or some such?