Michigan teen buys billionth iTune song

A Michigan teenager has purchased the billionth song from Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store.

For his 99 cent purchase of Coldplay's "Speed of Sound," Alex Ostrovsky, 16, of West Bloomfield Hills, Mich., won a 20-inch iMac, 10 iPods, a $10,000 gift card for the iTunes store, and a scholarship in his name at New York's Juilliard School, the New York Times reported Friday.

The last 24 hours have been "surreal" the teenager said.

"I'd been asking my parents for a new computer for a while, so this was a dream come true," he said, adding one of the iPods will stay with him and the other nine will go to friends and family.

As for the $10,000 gift card -- well, that's a lot of downloads.

"My sister has already called from New York to talk about divvying it up and I'll probably buy some music for friends," he said.

Prior to Thursday, Ostrovsky said he was more likely to borrow CDs from friends than actually buy songs online. But all that has changed.

"I'm certainly going to download more songs now," he said.

© Copyright 2006 by United Press International