Apple's Billion Song Countdown promo is quickly approaching the 1 billion mark, as the company continues to lead the industry in online music sales via the iTunes Music Store. On Wednesday evening, Apple's online counter showed that iTunes had sold just over 999,500,000 songs--about half a million songs short of the industry milestone. Apple is offering a 4GB iPod nano and $100 iTunes gift certificate to the customer who purchases every 100,000th song and an even larger package to the lucky customer who downloads the billionth song--it includes a 20-inch iMac, 10 60GB iPods, and a $10,000 iTunes gift certificate and a full-ride scholarship in your name to a world-renowned music school. Just think: You could help launch the careers of an entire generation of musicians." Free entry forms are available on the Web as well.

Interestingly, the counter on the iTunes Music Store (front page) seems to be ahead of the counters on Apple.com.