Gadgetopia

Early yesterday morning Apple sold its 1 billionth song through iTunes Music Service.

The billionth song ”Speed of Sound” was purchased as part of Coldplay’s “X&Y” album by Alex Ostrovsky from West Bloomfield, Michigan and as the grand prize winner he will receive a 20-inch iMac, 10 fifth generation iPods and a $10,000 gift card good for any item on the iTunes Music Store. In addition, Apple will establish a scholarship to the world-renowned Juilliard School in his name to commemorate this milestone.

Holy cow! What a prize package! You can’t say Apple isn’t generous, but the Julliard thing is a bit over the top if you ask me.

You’re probably thinking, “I heard about that already,” but here’s a little trivia to make this post a little worthwhile: If you had one billion songs in your playlist and played them back to back, after 5,700 years* you would still have almost another eight years before you reached the end. By comparison, if Alex Ostrovsky from West Bloomfield, MI, were to spend his $10,000 IMS wad only on iTunes music, he’d end up with enough music to last just over 21 days*, and would be more than a 30GB iPod can hold.

And one other little tidbit I learned today; you can actually buy an iPod through iTunes, lending some credence to the assertion that iTunes exists to sell iPods. Go figure.

(*assuming an average of 3 minutes per song, encoded as MP3 at 160kbps, and 44.1kHz sample rate.)