Apple announced Thursday that its European iTunes Music Stores have sold more than 50 million songs since first opening a year ago. Apple estimates it’s sold more than 400 million songs total through iTunes since the store first went online in 2003.
Apple’s European iTunes operations first opened in June, 2004 with stores in the United Kingdom, France and Germany — racking up 800,000 songs sold and download in the first week of operations. Since then, Apple has opened up iTunes Music Stores in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Apple has also brought the iTunes Music Store to Canada.
Apple said that with its current reach, the company provides iTunes Music Store services to more than 70 percent of the global music market. Each of its iTunes Music Stores provide commercial music from the major music publishers and more than 1,000 independent record labels — the stores average more than one million songs each, according to Apple.