There’s very little doubt that iTunes is a beloved platform. Even if you give Apple credit for setting up and running iTunes, you’d probably be surprised just how popular the online downloading service has become.

Apple (News - Alert) recently announced it reached 25 billion songs sold. That means that iTunes has now sold so many songs that it averages out to three songs per man, woman and child on the planet.

The firm also awarded a gift card worth $13,500 to the lucky German student who had the 25th billion download.

Apple has been expanding its services, such as Apple TV, for years now, but there’s still a backbone of the company easily found in iTunes. The popular music database is actually what holds all of the Apple devices together smoothly and efficiently. The service was launched in 2003 and has since seen about 15,000 downloads per minute.

An economics student in Hanover, Germany, Phillip Luepke was the Apple user who was lucky enough to get the 25 billionth download. Luepke says he had heard a song at a disco a couple of nights before and had downloaded it from iTunes.

The next day he received notice from Apple that he had the auspicious mark.

"I woke up this morning and had an e-mail from Apple saying I had the 25 billionth download," Luepke said. "In fact, I didn't quite believe it at first. It's a new feeling for me."

The student said he’s not entirely sure how he’s going to spend all of his new Apple assets, but expects his movie and music collections to grow pretty quickly. 

As for 25 billionth download? Luepke’s new song was called “Monkey Drums” by a British DJ, Chase Buch.