Apple Offers $10K in 10 Billionth iTunes Download Contest

Apple is offering a quick way for one lucky music lover to seriously amp up his or her music collection. The iPod maker is offering a $10,000 iTunes gift card, in a contest to commemorate its 10 billionth music download.
“iTunes changed the way you buy music, making songs and albums available for download, day or night,” Apple wrote on its Website. “Seven years later, we’re about to celebrate our biggest milestone for music, yet-10 billion songs downloaded.”
As for the gift card, Apple continued, “It’s our way of saying thanks.”
While Apple says downloading the 10 billionth song “could” lead you to the big-money prize, consumers can also enter to win without a purchase or download by filling out this form.
Anyone 13 years or older can offer 25 entries per day, as long as they’re a legal resident of the United States, Canada (except for those in the province of Quebec-sorry, guys!), Japan, Mexico and a handful of European nations listed in gray fine print on the entry form page.
The contest ends after the 10 billionth song is download, which means it’s time to pull up that entry form. As of this writing, Apple’s tally was at 9.88 billion-plus and quickly counting.
In April 2009, 13-year-old Connor Mulcahey of Connecticut won a similar Apple contest surrounding its 1 billionth application download. Mulcahey, in an even sweeter deal, won a $10,000 iTunes gift card, an iPod Touch and a Time Capsule.
By July, the App Store had hit 1.5 billion downloads. “The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement at the time. “With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up.”
Indeed, the same remains true today.