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February 24, 2006 (NY TIMES)

A Milestone for iTunes; a Windfall for a Downloader

By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH
It may well have been the best 99 cents Alex Ostrovsky ever spent.

Early yesterday, he paid that amount to download "Speed of Sound," a song on the Coldplay album "X&Y," from the iTunes Music Store, the Internet music shop that Apple Computer started less than three years ago.

He did not know it, but it was the billionth song the site had sold, and Apple was not about to let that go unnoticed.

So at 12:45 a.m., Mr. Ostrovsky's phone rang. It was an Apple employee, telling him that in addition to the song, Apple was giving him a 20-inch iMac, 10 iPods and a $10,000 gift card for the iTunes store. It is even establishing a scholarship at the Juilliard School in his name.

Mr. Ostrovsky, 16, was still trying to absorb it all yesterday. His phone had been ringing all day, alternating between reporters wanting to know his reaction and friends wanting to congratulate him.

At one point Mr. Ostrovsky, who lives in West Bloomfield, Mich., went to an Apple store to look at iMacs. "Everyone there knew who I was, too," he said. "It's just surreal."

He has pretty concrete ideas about how he will use the prizes, though. The iMac stays with him — "I'd been asking my parents for a new computer for a while, so this was a dream come true," he said. He will keep an iPod, and family and friends will get the rest. But the $10,000 gift card has him a bit flummoxed.

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

But he will also buy more for himself. Until now, Mr. Ostrovsky has not been a frequent user of the iTunes store. "I've downloaded maybe 50 songs, but I was always more likely to borrow CD's from my friends," he said. "I'm certainly going to download more songs now."

That would certainly be music to Apple's ears.