iTunes Billion songs countdown

Am I the only person who sees fit to mention that the "iTunes Music Store Billion Songs Coundown" is a CountUP?

To win an iPod or the Grand Prize for the billionth song, you must buy a song each time the counter turns 100,000. The problem is: you can't rely on Apple's counter. It doesn't display the real-time count, it makes a projection based on a snapshot of the sales data over a period of 5 minutes, and that projection is always underestimated so that the counter doesn't go up and down each time the new data is released. With their method, it always goes up - but it's not accurate.

The Apple counter also relies on a 100ms timer to keep running, but if your machine is blocked doing something (like dragging a scrollbar in your browser or whatever), it stops and loses count.

I quickly fixed that over the weekend. Here is my page:
http://www.billiontunescounter.com/

It ain't pretty but so far today, it works. That should bring you one step closer to the 10 iPods and the $10,000 gift certificate. Good luck!

is the countdown on the apple site an actual reflection of songs downloaded? or is it a clever bit of animation without real reference to the downloads? is it "live"? is it? answer me that then.

So is it live? Live? It? Live? Is?

Does buying an album count as 12 song purchases, or must each song be purchased one by one?

Whoa, I can't imagine buying $10,000 of music.

To win through filling the forms, do you have to send the form as a song count is met to win (for example 999,100,000) or do they mix your entry in randomly?

It's just an app - try opening several windows/tabs in your browser and the values of the timer are different.

does anyone know if the counter to a billion is time accurate or if it's just an app?

I wonder which music school they're talking about... (cough...cough...BERKLEE...cough...) damn, I should really get some Robitussin or something.
Anyway, Berklee makes all their new and returning students buy a $2500 Apple laptop package before starting classes, and there's not a single non-apple computer in any of Berklee's computer labs, synth labs, or recording studios, so it's about time Apple gave something back!
(oops, I forgot, I think they do have one old Gateway laptop there, but it's holding up a wobbly table in the cafeteria.)

Piotr,
That happens sometimes in the US iTMS too. In fact, when I checked this morning, ours said that as well. Give it a day or so and it should change to say Free. Hope that helps!