Apple?? announced that iTunes?? is now the number two music retailer in the US behind only Wal-Mart based on the latest data from the NPD Group*. Apple also announced that there are now over 50 million iTunes Store customers. iTunes has sold over four billion songs with an incredible 20 million songs sold on Christmas Day 2007 alone and offers the world's largest music catalog of over six million songs from all of the major and thousands of independent labels. "We'd like to thank the over 50 million music lovers who have helped the iTunes Store reach this incredible milestone " said Eddy Cue Apple's vice president of iTunes. "We continue to add great new features like iTunes Movie Rentals to give our customers even more reason to love iTunes." Last month Apple launched iTunes Movie Rentals featuring movies from all of the major movie studios including 20th Century Fox The Walt Disney Studios Warner Bros. Paramount Universal Studios Home Entertainment Sony Pictures Entertainment Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Lionsgate and New Line Cinema. Users can rent movies and watch them on their PCs or Macs all current generation iPods** iPhone??? and on a widescreen TV with Apple TV??. iTunes Movie Rentals will offer over 1 000 titles by the end of this month including over 100 titles in stunning high definition video with 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound which users can rent directly from their widescreen TV using Apple TV. iTunes is available as a free download at . iTunes Movie Rentals are available in the US only and are $2.99 (US) for library titles and $3.99 (US) for new releases and high definition versions are priced just one dollar more with library titles at $3.99 (US) and new releases at $4.99 (US). Movie rentals from the iTunes Store for Mac?? or Windows require iTunes 7.6. iTunes Movie Rentals require a valid credit card with a billing address in the country of purchase. *Based on data from market research firm the NPD Group's MusicWatch survey that captures consumer reported past week unit purchases and counts one CD representing 12 tracks excluding wireless transactions. The iTunes Music Store became the second-largest music retailer in the US after Wal-Mart based on the amount of music sold during 2007. **Movie rentals work on iPod?? classic iPod nano with video and iPod touch. By Erwin De Laat This article is also available at Also visit our

Ticket sales are for our second (EconSM) full-day conference being held on April 29th at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles. This year we're advancing the conversation we began at EconSM '07 by investigating the evolving economics of social media looking at the survivors and up-and-comers and at how deals and business models are being affected by enabling technologies and the creative process. The preliminary program draft . Some of the speakers confirmed include: Jeff Weiner EVP Yahoo Frank Cooper VP-Marketing Pepsi-Cola North America Jeff Price President SI Digital Geoff Yang Founding Partner Redpoint Ventures Michael Hirshland General Partner Polaris Venture Partners Betsy Morgan CEO The Huffington Post Keith Richman CEO Break.com Gordon Paddison EVP Marketing New Line Cinema and others to come??? for your early bird ticket...they're bound to go fast judging by the sell-out last year. Sponsors till now : Platinum : ; Gold : For sponsorship queries for EconSM contact our business side at advertising AT contentnext.com .