Apple iTunes rocks Europe

Apple today launched a European version of its iTunes Music Store, extending the reach of its service to Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.

The offering retains the same features and per-song price of 99 euro cents, established in June for customers in UK, Germany and France. It allows users to play songs on up to five PCs, burn a single song onto CDs an unlimited number of times, burn the same playlist up to seven times and listen to music on an unlimited number of iPods.

"We're excited to bring the iTunes Music Store to even more music fans across Europe, and with this expansion we now reach customers in almost 70 per cent of the global music market," said Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of applications.

The EU iTunes Music Store features over 700,000 songs from all four major music companies and more than 100 independent record labels, in addition to tracks from a wide variety of leading worldwide artists, including songs from Anastacia, Andrea Bocelli, Black Eyed Peas, Destiny's Child, Duran Duran, Keane, Bob Marley, George Michael, Gianni Morandi, Nas, Laura Pausini, The Prodigy, Gwen Stefani, Travis and Zucchero.

The company also announced that it will launch the iTunes Music Store in Canada in November.