Timing the Apple iTunes 500 Million Song Hit

Apple is offering 10 free iPods, music and Coldplay tickets to the customer who purchases the 500 millionth song via the iTunes Music Store. To promote the contest, their homepage has some AJAX code that shows the number of songs sold so far. Some reverse engineering revealed the URL they use to seed the AJAX application, and hence one can far more accurately predict when they will reach half a billion. Sales will obviously increase as they near their target, but Apple also gives away a free iPod mini each 100,000 song sold somewhat foretelling typical spike strength. With some clever last-minute math and a bulk purchase of iTunes music, one could drastically increase their chances of meeting Coldplay backstage.

Apple publishes the raw iTunes counter information through this URL: http://www.apple.com/itunes/external_counter.xml

Some sample data looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<root>
<count name="curCount" timestamp="Tue, 12 Jul 2005 23:51:01 GMT">492664611</count>
<count name="preCount" timestamp="Tue, 12 Jul 2005 23:46:01 GMT">492658109</count>
</root>

We are going to need some historical data, so I have been recording the feed every 5 minutes for the past few days. (it seems that the feed is updated about every five minutes though there has been lag at times) Looking through the historical data and noting things like time of day and proximity to a 100,000 mark, we can come up with some general statements about the average number of songs sold per tick of time and where the spikes are. I have included an Excel sheet with some of the historical data for your perusal.

Now of course, the task that I will leave to you is to gage the big 500 millionth song tick and time our purchase for then. For the best results, we want to take samples and run our equation right to the last minute to get an idea of just how big the wave will be before deciding to start making purchases. (I'll leave that to you to figure out) Of course we're going to have to factor in the fact that I'm telling you this, but given the fairly good chance that Apple's feed is reliable and not very many people are “hip” to this, you can greatly increase your odds of hanging with Coldplay.

P.S. If you win, I could always use a U2 iPod.

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Comments (3)

Inga from

Idomu, labai idomu. Worth of trying perhaps.

Anders from RTP

For those of you who don't want to do the math, the roll-over will be some time this afternoon. :)

Anders from RTP

Well, the game is up. Remember, I still want that iPod...

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