Apple have finally launched their online music store iTunes in Europe, but only a select few countries have access to it. More specifically, France, Germany and the UK can use it, with support for the rest of the European Union supposedly coming in October of this year.
With a catalogue of over 700,000 tracks from all five of the major record companies, as well as many independent record labels, consumers certainly have plenty of choice when it comes to content. They also now have lots of choice when it comes to service selection, with Napster, OD2, Wippit, and many more, all now jostling for place to attract customers. Apple have one of the largest brands in the online music industry service, and no doubt they'll be hoping to capitalise on that. Also, their seamless integration with the iPod music player make it the service of choice for users of that device.
Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, had the following to say about the iTunes launch:
The number one online music store in the world has finally come to the UK, France and Germany. With a huge catalogue of over 700,000 songs, breakthrough prices of just €0.99 and £0.79 per song and seamless integration with Apple's wildly popular iPod, we think this is the digital music store that Europe has been waiting for.
Artists represented include, Ash, the Black Eyed Peas, The Darkness, Snow Patrol, and many many others. However, some notable exceptions such as Basement Jaxx, the White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand and Craig David exist, due to arguments between Apple and their labels over licensing terms.
Online music stores have certainly been in the news a lot recently, with many new offerings helping to lower prices and reduce pirating. Whether or not Steve Jobs' vision of all music being online in the future will come true is something we're going to have to wait and see, but we're confident at least that online music is definitely here to stay.
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