iTunes hits a billion sales

Apple has announced more than one billion songs have now been downloaded from the 21 iTunes music stores across the globe.

To celebrate the milestone, Apple gave the iTunes user who downloaded the one billionth song an iMac, a $10,000 iTunes gift card and 10 iPods, as well as creating a scholarship, named after the winner, to a music college of his or her choice.

The Mac maker also gave away iTunes gift cards and an iPod nano to downloaders who hit 100,000 song milestones on the way to the one billionth download, echoing a similar promotion which ran to mark the 500 millionth track in July last year.

According to research company Nielsen/Netratings, there were around 21 million active iTunes users as of December -- an increase of 241 per cent on the previous year.