Apple's iTunes surpasses 10 billion song downloads

Less than seven years after Apple launched its iTunes Store, the computing giant announced that consumers have now downloaded over 10 billion songs from the digital storefront. The iTunes Store reached the 5 billion download milestone in June 2008.As of mid-2009, iTunes accounts for 25 percent of all music sales in the U.S., up from 21 percent in 2008, according to market research firm NPD Group. Retail giant Wal-Mart accounts for 14 percent of all U.S. music sales between its physical CD sales and online sales--iTunes passed Wal-Mart to become the nation's largest music retailer in early 2008. Looking solely at digital music sales, iTunes represents 69 percent of all U.S. purchases, followed by Amazon MP3 at 8 percent.

To celebrate the latest iTunes sales benchmark, Apple released a list of the store's most downloaded songs of all time. Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling" is number one, and the group's "Boom Boom Pow" is number three--Lady GaGa's "Poker Face" is number two, Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours" is fourth and Coldplay's "Viva la Vida" is fifth. That sound you hear is John Lennon spinning in his grave.

For more on the iTunes milestone:
- check out the Apple website

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