CUPERTINO, California—Apple® today announced that its revolutionary iTunes® Music Store sold over one million songs during its first week. Over half of the songs were purchased as albums, dispelling concerns that selling music on a per-track basis will destroy album sales. In addition, over half of the 200,000 songs offered on the iTunes Music Store were purchased at least once, demonstrating the breadth of musical tastes served by Apple's groundbreaking online store. Apple also reported that over one million copies of iTunes 4 have been downloaded, and that it has received orders for over 110,000 new third-generation iPods since their introduction a week ago, with music lovers snapping up more than 20,000 of them from stores in the U.S. this weekend.

“In less than one week we’ve broken every record and become the largest online music company in the world,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Apple has created the first complete solution for the digital music age—you can purchase your favorite music online at the iTunes Music Store, mix your favorite tracks into playlists with iTunes, and take your entire music collection with you everywhere with the super-slim new iPods.”

The iTunes Music Store features over 200,000 songs from major music companies including BMG, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal, and Warner and lets customers quickly find, purchase and download the music they want for just 99 cents per song. The iTunes Music Store offers groundbreaking personal use rights that allow users to burn songs onto an unlimited number of CDs for personal use, listen to songs on an unlimited number of iPods, play songs on up to three Macintosh® computers, and use songs in other applications on the Mac®, including iPhoto™, iMovie™ and iDVD™.  more...