iTunes Store Passes Five Billion Songs Sold

McDonald's has nothing to worry about - yet - but Apple still has reason to crow. Thursday it announced that the iTunes store has sold over 5 billion songs.

At the same time Apple announced that iTunes is renting over 50,000 movies a day, making it, according to Apple, the most popular online video rental retailer.

Finally, Apple cited NPD data, showing it to be the number one music retailer in the US (based on January and February NPD MusicWatch surveys).

Great for Apple, but bad for consumers, as most of what Apple sells has DRM (copy protection); with all its market power it obviously feels no need to join Amazon MP3 and others with an all-DRM-free catalog.

Naturally, the fact that iTunes on the desktop is used for all the synching and transfer to the device makes the iTunes Store the easy and obvious choice for consumers. Still, I point everyone I know to Amazon MP3 - the less DRM, IMHO, the better.