∞ Predicting when Apple will hit its 10 billionth song

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I just love watching what smart people come up with. The latest is an algorithm to figure out when Apple will reach its 10 billionth song downloaded.

Barry Schwartz, Mike Butler and Alex Fierro came up with a way to predict when the company will reach the milestone. According to Schwartz, this is how they figured things out.

“To come up with a good estimation, we started by taking a look at Apple’s “countdown” page. The 10 Billion Song Countdown page features a really awesome countdown effect without a lick of Flash; it’s all done by moving a large background-image up and down with Javascript and CSS. By taking a look at the source code, we quickly discovered that the counter’s starting amount and rate of change is being loaded from a text file.”

You can see the counter on his Web site. The counter is down to 83 million and dropping. The estimated time to reach 10 billion is in 7 days, 11 hours.

Apple is holding a contest with a $10,000 gift card going to the person that downloads the 10 billionth song.


  • Bob

    Actually, the counter on their page is counting down, and stands at over 83 million left to go before the milestone. There’s no “8 billion” involved in the counter on Barry’s site.

    And while the article is on Barry’s site, it was written by Alex Fierro, who apparently worked with Mike Butler on the project.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/jdalrymple Jim Dalrymple

      Thanks Bob, I misread the counter. Also added Mike and Alex to the story.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=46304113 Alex Fierro

    This just got forwarded to me. Thanks for the credit edit and the write up Jim!

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/jdalrymple Jim Dalrymple

    Great stuff Alex!!

  • Chuck Miller

    Gee, maybe I should get ready to download some new tunes. Anyway, Jim, I just wanted to tell you that I like the tweaking you've done to the site. I like the commenting system (not sure when you began using it). Will have to check it out for my site. The Bodega is also a cool new addition.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/jdalrymple Jim Dalrymple

    Thanks Chuck, I appreciate that!