Apple's iTunes Music Sales Top 5 Billion

More than five billion songs have been downloaded from iTunes, Apple said on Thursday, firmly cementing its status as an industry-leader in music sales.

According to the Port Washington, N.Y.-based research firm NPD Group, Apple's iTunes online store is the leading music retailer in the U.S., topping Wal-Mart and other retail outlets in January and February 2008.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company also said that iTunes customers rent or purchase more than 50,000 movies every day, making it the most popular online movie store in the world.

Most major movie studios distribute their films through iTunes, including: 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Brothers, Paramount, MGM, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and New Line Cinema. Users can watch movies on computers, both Mac and PC, on iPods, the iPhone or on a television using Apple's Apple TV. Films are made available on iTunes the day they are released on DVD.

The iTunes catalog has more than eight million songs, 20,000 episodes of television shows from both network and cable television, and over 2,000 movies, more than 350 of which are high definition.