Hold the phone, there, Beryl-- remember that iTunes Music Store sales update last week? Sure you do; that was the one where people were reporting that the tally stood at 20 million songs sold as of a week ago, December 8th. And while that sounded like a whole lotta tunes at first, doing the math seemed to indicate a massive slowdown in iTMS sales-- down to weekly levels even lower than they had been prior to the advent of iTunes for Windows. This startling revelation led to much gnashing of teeth among the Mac faithful, and almost as much looking up what exactly the word "gnashing" means. (We're too lazy to bother, but we're pretty sure it's a small village in England.)

But no worries, folks, because whenever Apple sold its 20 millionth song, it wasn't last Monday-- at least, not unless the company had a four-day sales spike so steep it's got sherpas setting up camp at its base. A new press release shouts to the heavens that the iTMS sold its 25 millionth song this past Friday ("Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" by Ol' Blue Eyes), which definitely skews the math a bit. Apple reported a running count of 17 million songs sold as of November 6th, and 7 million songs in five weeks comes out to, as Steve himself says, "almost 1.5 million songs per week." That's not going to put Sam Goody out of business anytime soon, but it's still a plenty respectable rate, in our book.

In fact, it's especially nifty given what's happening with the competition. As faithful viewer Adam J. Bezark points out, doltmeister Scott Blum-- you know, that guy who swore that his BuyMusic.com venture would sell a million songs per day just because he spent $20 million to slap a naked picture of ex-Mötley Crüe jailbird Tommy Lee up in Times Square-- told USA Today that his service (and we use the term loosely, here) was "not achieving that at all." He wouldn't give figures, but Scott had the unexpected grace to admit that he had "spoken with [his] competitors," and BuyMusic and the other services are "nowhere near [Apple's] numbers." Feel free to be all smug about it.

Heck, if you're looking to get insufferably smug today, you should take note that the USA Today article all about the superiority of the iTMS was penned by none other than Jefferson Graham, that same guy who slammed iTunes so badly after having spent about 90 minutes with the Windows version when it first came out. Funny how he's gone from calling iTunes "not worth it in comparison to its competitors" to saying it's the "digital hit of the year" and the "easiest to use." Sounds like his doctor put him on clue pills.

Oh, one last thing to put your smug machine into overdrive: apparently those 25 million songs purchased don't include the "over $1 million of iTunes online gift certificates and allowances" that Apple has sold in the past two months-- and we wouldn't be surprised if Apple sells a lot more as Christmas approaches and people get desperate. There you go; enough smug to last you clean through Arbor Day. Enjoy.