Apple's Billion iTunes Counter Clicks to One Billion
At approximately 12:38am EST on Thursday, Apple's 1 billionth song counter clicked over. Were you like me and
stacking up a few dozen (or more?) song purchases in the last 10-20,000 songs on the counter, all while constantly
force-reloading the "billion" page to see the counter tick up faster and faster?I'm quite intrigued by this contest, having completely missed the last one Apple held. At the very least, the odds are better than the Lotto, and I got some really great music out of it. If the unlikely happens and I win the grand prize, I'll donate one of the 10 iPods to TUAW for a prize. The iMac is mine, though. Heh...
P.S. Apple's already updated their homepage to announce the one billion song threshold.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Robert said 12:50AM on 2-23-2006
I was sitting at work watching the countdown. I thought I would buy a song 5000 songs before the billion mark, but by the time I got my finger on the button it jumped above a billion. Oh well!
http://stuffinjapan.blogspot.com/
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A.T. said 12:53AM on 2-23-2006
1 billion legally downloaded songs is tremendous, now to stop the RIAA from complaining and suing gangster rap-loving grandmas. Oh and the punk rock infants, can't forget those.
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Chris said 12:58AM on 2-23-2006
i filled out their free entry form, and just kept reloaded and tried to click submit a few seconds before it was all over
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scaevola said 1:02AM on 2-23-2006
With about 100,000 songs to go my connection to the iTMS server slowed way down so I started downloading the albums I'd put in my shopping cart. I only got through about 28 songs before it said the contest was over with a lot of pauses in between, but maybe it was my lucky night out here on the East Coast. Hopefully we'll all know one way or another before too long, because I can't stand the suspense!
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Jared said 1:03AM on 2-23-2006
I was right there with you. Managed a few albums that I've been holding off from buying and tonight just seemed to be the right night to buy!
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Chris Grande said 1:04AM on 2-23-2006
I just had one song. Since it only takes one to win.
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umijin said 1:18AM on 2-23-2006
*yawn*
Amazing that people find this more than mildly interesting.
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Xenedar said 1:23AM on 2-23-2006
I wonder: is the 20" iMac (in the prize) an Intel one or a G5?
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John said 1:26AM on 2-23-2006
Welp i purchsed at 12:39am according to my info heres hoping my time was off by a minute ya know
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Chris said 1:26AM on 2-23-2006
should be intel...I wouldn't think they would give an outdate iMac G5 at a time like this
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Christopher said 6:41AM on 2-23-2006
I must be responsible for about 35 of those. ;-)
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tdungan said 7:06AM on 2-23-2006
Xenedar,
I think Chris is right. I was one of the winners of the 100 million song contest and shortly after I won, they annouced the 4G ipod. I had the same doubts as you but when I eventually received my prize it was the newer product.
In my case, they didn't even announce the new product until after I had won. In this case, the newer products were released before the contest ended. So I'd be fairly confident that the winners will all receive the newest products.
Based on experience though, they won't receive their prize for about 2 months. I'm not complaining - at least I won something for a change. =)
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Mitch said 7:07AM on 2-23-2006
I almost got the 1,000,000,000 screen cap! Missed it by two:
static.flickr.com/36/103383772_284c5bb115_o.png
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Jonathan said 8:21AM on 2-23-2006
The counters on the various apple pages were all at different intervals at the same times, so I highly doubt that these were the actual numbers and the actual threshold. This took screenshots of the counter on the apple website, and the counter from the itunes store at the same time (at 12:30 AM), and the itunes store counter was at least 6K higher than the website counter... fishy.
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Berko said 9:34AM on 2-23-2006
I, too, was waiting to buy at around the 5,000-3,000 to go range. My wife and I had albums cued up on all three of our computers. I picked up the remote to turn down the TV and five seconds later when I looked back, the counter on my iTMS Estimator widget had jumped from 999,994,*** to 1,000,012,***. So, didn't even get to click. Prolly for the best, since I didn't exactly have the money to buy music right now anyway. What do you think they'll give away at 1,000,000,000,000?
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superjeff said 9:38AM on 2-23-2006
Again... because there is a free entry option, don't you think you get entered for every song and every free entry and after the 1000000th song is sold, they pick a winner out of the entrants? Otherwise I don't see how the free entrants could ever win.
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Chris said 9:54AM on 2-23-2006
Great we've given Apple at least 790,000,000 in revenue
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avixe said 10:15AM on 2-23-2006
#14,
What's left of the sun.
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arkowi said 11:08AM on 2-23-2006
The lucky winner will be whisked away in the Jobs-evator to dance with the oompa loompas in a field made of iPods where even the flowers and trees have click wheels.
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Shawn McEntyre said 1:33PM on 2-23-2006
Thank God for credit... I spent way more than my weekly, nay monthly music allowance last night, buying everything in my wish list from bill cosby to mezzanine. My questions, is how do you know if you won?
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