Category Archives: Tech News

iTunes 2 billion songs purchased on a graph

Last February, I posted a graph showing the growth of the iTunes music store. Back then the big news was that Apple had sold their one billionth song. Lost in the shuffle of Steve Jobs’ huge announcements at MacWorld yesterday was the news that Apple recently sold their 2 billionth song on iTunes. That’s another billion songs in less than a year. So much for the recent speculation that iTunes sales are slowing. Here’s the updated graph…

Date

Songs Purchased (millions)

Source

05/15/20031Apple
06/23/20035Apple
09/8/200310Apple
12/15/200325Apple
03/15/200450Apple
07/12/2004100CNN
12/16/2004200Apple
07/18/2005500Apple
02/24/20061000Apple
01/09/20072000Apple

graph created using NCES Create a Graph

iTunes Song Purchases plotted on a graph

Apple recently announced 1 billion songs purchased on iTunes. I dug around the Apple press releases and tracked down some of the major iTunes milestones over the last few years. It’s amazing that there have been 500 million songs purchased since July 2005. That’s 500 million songs purchased in 7 months for an average of 71 million songs purchased per month!

2/26/06 Update:

Additional data point: 850 million on Jan 10, 2006 (announced at Macworld)

Date

Songs Purchased (millions)

Source

05/15/20031Apple
06/23/20035Apple
09/8/200310Apple
12/15/200325Apple
03/15/200450Apple
07/12/2004100CNN
12/16/2004200Apple
07/17/2005500Apple
02/24/20061000Apple

graph created using NCES Create a Graph