San Francisco, Feb 7 (IANS): Apple has announced that its online iTunes Store has reached a new milestone, with more than 25 billion songs purchased and downloaded since the store's debut 10 years ago.

"We are grateful to our users whose passion for music over the past 10 years has made iTunes the No.1 music retailer in the world," said Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet software and services, in a statement Wednesday.

He said that over 15,000 songs are downloaded on average per minute, reported Xinhua.

Apple also gave away a 10,000-euro iTunes Gift Card to Philip Lupke, a user from Germany who downloaded the 25 billionth song from the online music store.

The iTunes Store was first launched on April 28, 2003 and initially only featured around 200,000 songs from music companies. Through the promotion of legal downloads, the digital music store, along with Apple's portable music player iPod, revived the music industry that had been struggling with the battle over piracy arising from widespread online file sharing.

The iTunes Store, which became the world's largest music seller in February 2010, now offers over 26 million songs.