Sweet music as iTunes comes to town
Since its sensational launch last year, iTunes set a milestone as world’s number one online music service commanding a mega-share of the music market in Britain and the US.
The new service available to Irish customers features more than 700,000 downloads at a per-song price of 99 cents.
Apple’s director of product development in Ireland, Chris Bell, said last night the introduction of the online music store to Ireland was a significant development.
“We watched with great excitement as the iTunes service swept across Europe and, finally, welcomed its arrival in Ireland.”
New exclusive tracks from Damien Rice, The Thrills, The Pogues and Corrs are all available to Irish customers as an introductory offer.
“The joy in accessing the service is there’s no subscription rates or no complicated rights in previewing downloads,” said Mr Bell.
The European version took Britain, France and Germany by storm when it was introduced in June last.
However, along with the launch of two new iPods, Apple expanded its iTunes Music Store into nine new EU markets in autumn last.
Until today, however, Ireland was one of three states in the EU where the service was not available.
The service 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.
The iPod, which helped to transform Apple’s financial performance, became a must-have accessory since introduced over three years ago. In the run-up to Christmas, Apple also took the wraps off its iPod U2 Special Edition, a new 20GB version of the player. It emerged in recent months that over a quarter of Apple's multi-billion dollar revenue came from its music business, that includes the iPod and the iPod Mini, as well as the iTunes music store.
