Tag: euroitunes

Apple is close to a deal with independent record labels that will allow its European iTunes Music Stores to sell their tracks, The Times newspaper reported on Monday. “Citing sources close to the talks, the newspaper said a pact could be announced on Tuesday, ending a feud that has kept independent labels off iTunes since its launch in the UK, France and Germany last month.

Billboard Bulletin reports that the iTunes Music Stores in the UK, France and Germany have lost little sales momentum in their second week of operations. The services have sold more than 1.5 million combined download sales since launching June 15. The European stores sold 800,000 songs in total in their debut week. Comparatively, Apple sold 1 million songs in the US in its first week.

According to The Independent, record labels in Europe are dragging their feet in licensing songs to Apple because they fear the success of a Euro iTunes Music Store could dictate which artists succeed or fail by deciding which to promote more. “The big fear is that Apple will become like an online MTV — where the record labels gave away their content, in the form of videos, without getting control of it,” a source familiar with the issues said.

Apple said on Friday that it still plans to launch a European version of its iTunes Music Store this year, saying it would not rush it out until it is perfect. “When we launch in Europe, we want to do it well. There can be no compromise on the ease of use, the depth of the catalog or the responsiveness (of the service),” Apple’s European chief Pascal Cagni told Reuters. When asked if he was sticking to the launch target year of 2004, Cagni said, “Absolutely.” Read More

Billboard reports that Apple’s success with its iTunes Music Store in the US will be much harder to duplicate in Europe due to the region’s complex multilingual, multicultural and multi-regulatory issues. “There’s a big race for Europe. In the first half of next year, we can expect four to five of the big U.S. names in Europe,” says John Rose, London-based EMI Group’s executive VP.

Apple’s attempts to launch a European version of its iTunes Music Store have been held up until next year by disputes between record labels and their artists over licensing, according to The Independent. Pascal Cagni, vice-president of Apple’s European operations, told the publication: “In Europe the legal environment [for licensing songs for download] is more complicated than in the US, so the one-price-fits-all system that the US uses is difficult to do here.