Apple boss Steve Jobs was in a bullish mood yesterday when he announced that over 800,000 songs had been sold via iTunes' European service since it launched last week - 450,000 of those here in the UK. Those figures make iTunes, or so Apple claim, the biggest online music store in Europe - Jobs claims his service outsold by sixteen times London based rivals OD2, who sell music via the Coke, HMV, Tiscali and Virgin Megastore download services.
iTunes' immediate success in Europe was no doubt helped by the existing large population of Apple iPod owners who cannot access tracks from most rival legal download services and who had been awaiting the Apple online music store for some time.
Top selling tracks in the first week included music by Anastacia, Alicia Keyes and German artist Herbert Gronemeyer, as well as the new Pixies track - 'Bam Thwok' - that was made available exclusively via the service.