iTunes reaches three billion song downloads

Cupertino (CA) - Apple announced today that it has reached its three billionth song download over the digital music store iTunes, averaging over 50 downloads per second since January.

The latest milestone comes just a little over six months since the two billion sales mark in January 2007. That’s a billion songs in the past 203 days, or roughly 57 downloads every second for over half a year. This expansion is almost twice as fast as iTunes’ previous billion songs. To go from its one billionth download to its two billionth took 11 months.

The online music store passed Amazon.com several months ago to become the #3 music retailer in the country, behind Best Buy and Wal-Mart. Apple has previously stated it holds more than 80% of the digital music market share, but Nielsen SoundScan figures show that physical CD sales still account for nearly 85% of all music purchases.