Credit:
To speed along the process -- though it really doesn't appear that iTunes needs the extra push -- Apple is greasing the wheels and offering a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card to the individual credited with the 10 billionth song download. To increase your odds at the big iTunes prizes, you might want to keep your eyes on the nifty countdown mechanism (in fact I'm firing up iTunes as we speak).
The record iTunes event has been seven years in the making. In recent years, however, the song download rate appears to be speeding up at an astronomical pace, as less than two years ago Apple was merely touting four billion songs sold.