iAm Phillip Lupke - Apple’s new best friend

Does the name Phillip Lupke mean anything to you? It does to Apple.

Lupke downloaded the 25 billionth song on iTunes, unknowingly adding "Monkey Drums" (Goksel Vancin Remix - of course) by Chase Buch to his collection and creating history in the process.

While the download could have been Lupke's first ever on the music store, purely speculation, he will receive a €10,000 iTunes Gift Card and is now free to download the entire discography of the UK based techno band.

“We are grateful to our users whose passion for music over the past 10 years has made iTunes the number one music retailer in the world,” says Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services.

“Averaging over 15,000 songs downloaded per minute, the iTunes Store connects music fans with their favorite artists, including global sensations like Adele and Coldplay and new artists like The Lumineers, on a scale we never imagined possible.”

Cue's cheeky little artist name dropping no doubt carries some weight at Apple HQ, but what can't be debated is the company holding the world's most popular music store.

Storing over 26 million songs which have now reached 25 billion downloads, to both proclaim its popularity or indeed deny it would be a waste of computer ink.

But what is the next milestone for iTunes to reach? The unassigned indie groups or yesteryears punk rock bands may have found a place to sell their questionable music to a fan base consisting of family members, old school friends and deranged groupies, but how can iTunes expand and become even stronger in the industry?

Will it be a case of don't fix what isn't broken, or will Apple's musically gifted sound out a new direction for the ever-expanding music platform?