Apple has announced that over five billion songs have been downloaded worldwide through its iTunes online store in the past five years.

The virtual record shop was originally launched in the US as the iTunes Music Store back in April 2003, and it took Apple around four years to notch up three billion downloads worldwide.

But the latest figures show just how popular the library, which is said to contain about eight million songs currently, has become over the past year or so. Apple hasn’t given much more away though, such as which nations are the heaviest iTunes music downloaders.

Apple also recently expanded iTunes’ offerings to include SD and HD movies, and the company now claims that film fans are renting and buying in excess of 50,000 titles each day. This, Apple added, makes iTunes the world’s most popular online film store.