APPLE have announced today (June 23) that music fans in the UK, France and Germany have purchased and downloaded more than 800,000 songs from the iTUNES music store since its launch last week.
The computer giants also revealed that more than 450,000 tracks were sold in the UK alone since last Tuesday (June 15).
Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO said: “After selling over 800,000 songs during its first week, iTunes is Europe’s top online music store.”
He added: “In the UK alone, iTunes sold more than 450,000 songs in the last week—16 times as many as its closest competitor.”
Pixies, Alicia Keys, Anastacia and Herbert Gronemeyer were among the top selling artists over the last seven days.
As previously reported by NME.COM, Pixies released a brand new song ‘Bam Thwok’ exclusively through the online store last week.
Ken Goes, the band’s manager, said: “By distributing our first new song in 13 years exclusively on iTunes, we were able to quickly and inexpensively make it available to millions of fans in the United States and Europe. One week after its release, we are thrilled at the response from iTunes users that have helped to make ‘Bam Thwok’ a top seller across four countries.”
iTunes’ online music service offers downloaders a choice of over 700,000 songs to download from their Internet store.
Songs are priced at 79p in the UK (99 cents in France and Germany) and follows in the footsteps of the popular US service, through which users downloaded more than 70 million songs in its first year.
Tracks can then be downloaded onto a computer, copied onto a CD or played on an iPod digital music player.