Apple has announced that it has now sold more than five billion songs through its iTunes Store. Apple claims iTunes now offers more than 8 million tracks for sale, and is now also the world’s most popular online movie store with customers buying or renting more than 50,000 movies every day.
The announcement shows Apple’s music business continues to gain momentum: the company sold its first billion songs in February 2006, and the second billion by January 2007. The next billion songs were sold by July 2007, and although it didn’t specifically call out reaching a total of four billion, the company made a small note of the accomplishment in February 2008. At this rate, Apple should easily be on track to sell its six billionth song by the end of the year—particularly given the end-of-year rush iTunes tends to experience with the end-of-year iPod- and iTunes Gift Card-giving season.
Apple is also happy to let people know that, according to the NPD Groups’ MusicWatch survey, the iTunes store is still the leading music retailer in the United States if you consider 12 individual track sales to be basically equivalent to an album. Apple first popped to the top of the music retailing pack at the beginning of 2008.
