European iTunes Music Store Tops 50 Million Songs

Apple has announced that over 50 million songs have been downloaded and purchased from its European iTunes Music Stores in its first year.

European iTunes Music Stores operating in 17 European countries have catalogs of over one million songs each, and feature content from all major music companies and over 1,000 independent record labels.

"All iTunes Music Stores offer the same innovative features, breakthrough pricing and seamless integration with iPod® that have made iTunes the number one online music service in the world," says Apple in a statement.

“We’re thrilled to have sold and delivered over 50 million songs in our first year,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Applications. “We’d like to thank European music fans for making iTunes such a success.”

Since its launch two years ago, Apple’s iTunes Music Store has extended its reach to more than 70 percent of the global music market with stores in 19 countries, including the US and Canada, and more than 430 million songs purchased and downloaded worldwide.