Universal Music on Wednesday said that its European business unit has converted 300,000 songs to digital form, Reuters reports. The company is making its entire active European music catalog available to online music stores.
For now, the songs will be distributed through European digital music download service OD2, which distributes music through MSN and HMV. Universal also has deals in place with online music retailers in the United States like Apple and Napster. Neither Apple nor Napster have launched European music services yet, but both are widely expected to.
The catalog Universal Music has digitized includes popular North American artists along with popular European artists. The report indicates that Universal’s songs are “wrapped in digital rights management software,” but did not specify what that DRM technology consisted of.