APPLE'S ITUNES STORE claimed its 10 billionth song sale today, making it the undisputed king of the e-tail music hill despite the store's recent slowdown in music sales.
Johnny Cash, wherever he may be, became the artiste du jour when his "Guess Things Happen That Way" became another landmark victory for Apple's online store. Louie Sulcer, a resident of Woodstock, Georgia bought song #10,000,000,000 and was awarded a $10,000 Itunes gift card for his good fortune.
Mr Sulcer can now use it to help Apple reach the 100 billion tracks sales mark.
Helping the race to reach the 10 billion song download Apple had launched on February 11th a competition imaginatively called the "Countdown to 10 Billion Song Downloads", waving said $10,000 carrot in front of its customers.
Itunes customers could participate in one of two ways - by actually paying and downloading songs, or just by inserting their personal data on an entry form up to 25 times a day, up to 350 non-paid entries per person over the course of a fortnight.
The sweepstake would then actually be won when the first paid or non-paid "entry" was made after the 9,999,999,999th song download. This happened to be someone who actually bought something on Itunes, but it could have equally been someone who did not.
You can read them yourself, here and see the form here.
In its seventh year of business, the Itunes store has been fighting off a slowdown in sales since the introduction of the tiered pricing system. Still, the landmark number is there, 10 billion songs downloaded. µ
Ten billion songs have been downloaded from the iTunes Store, an online digital media store which is owned by Apple Incorporated. Louie Sulcer, of Woodstock in Georgia, downloaded "Guess Things Happen That Way" by American musician, Johnny Cash, which became the ten billionth song downloaded from iTunes. Sulcer won an iTunes gift card worth US$10,000 (approximately £6,550 or €7,380), after purchasing a song on the iTunes Store to win the prize.

Beforehand, Apple had launched a competition entitled "Countdown to 10 Billion Song Downloads", where the person to make the ten billionth "entry" of a song from the iTunes Store would win the gift card. An "entry" could be created by either downloading a song from the iTunes store, or by filling in a form on the Apple website. 

The rules of the competition stated that "the downloading of the 10 billionth song is considered to be either the downloading of the 10 billionth song from iTunes or the receipt of the non-purchase entry after the download of the 9,999,999,999th song, whichever comes first." 
Below is a table of the twenty most downloaded songs of all time from Apple's iTunes Store. The list was initially placed on the website.





 Rank

 Song

 Artist



1

"I Gotta Feeling"

Black Eyed Peas



2

"Poker Face"

Lady Gaga



3

"Boom Boom Pow"

Black Eyed Peas



4

"I'm Yours"

Jason Mraz



5

"Viva la Vida"

Coldplay



6

"Just Dance" (feat. Colby O'Donis)

Lady Gaga



7

"Low" (feat. T-Pain)

Flo Rida



8

"Love Story"

Taylor Swift



9

"Bleeding Love"

Leona Lewis



10

"TiK ToK"

Ke$ha



11

"Disturbia"

Rihanna



12

"So What"

P!nk



13

"I Kissed a Girl"

Katy Perry



14

"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)"

Beyoncé



15

"Hot N Cold"

Katy Perry



16

"Stronger"

Kanye West



17

"Live Your Life" (feat. Rihanna)

T.I.



18

"Hey There Delilah"

Plain White T's



19

"Right Round" (feat. Ke$ha)

Flo Rida



20

"Party in the U.S.A."

Miley Cyrus