iTunes sales top 450,000 in week

Apple's online music store iTunes is already rivalling CD singles sales just a week after opening in Britain.

More than 450,000 songs were sold on iTunes in the first week, compared with 500,000 CD singles.

And with 700,000 downloadable singles sold at 79p each and albums starting at ?7.99, Apple could overtake CD sales within months, experts say. Before the iTunes launch, the entire online music industry here sold just 500,000 songs in the first 22 weeks of 2004.

Matt Philips, of the British Phonographic Industry, said: 'We have been in a transitional period as people move towards downloading music. Now we are finally there.'

Top-selling artists in the first week included Lil' Jon with Ludacris and Usher, Black Eyed Peas and JoJo.

Apple hopes the service will be as big in the UK as in America, where 85million songs have been downloaded from iTunes on to computers, MP3 players and iPods and burned on to CDs.

With 800,000 downloads across Britain, France and Germany in the first week, iTunes was 'Europe's top online music store', Mr Jobs said.

However, critics say iTunes rips off British fans by charging them 20 per cent more than in France or Germany. Record labels hope that iTunes and other sites such as Roxio, Napster and Wippit will convert illegal file-sharers into customers and reverse a sales slump.