Sony has launched music download web sites in Britain, France and Germany, hoping to promote its own digital music players by selling music in its proprietary format. Britain, France and Germany make up 62 percent of the music sales in Europe and 23 percent of global sales.
Sony's Connect website allows subscribers to download over 300,000 songs for €0.99 cent per song, which is the same price for which songs can be downloaded from Apple's iTunes web site. Apple launched a European version of its iTunes Internet music site on June 15.
But Sony will have some catching up to do if it is to compete with Apples's iTunes, which has sold 85 million songs since it was launched in the US over 15 months ago and claims 70 percent of the legal download market. Apple has over 700,000 songs available, also for €0.99 per song.
Sony hopes to promote its own hardware through the portal, since the songs can only be played on Sony's hardware. Sony Europe chairman Chris Deering said that the group had already sold two million music players in Europe.
In August, Sony is to launch the NW-HD1, which is the size of a credit card and has 20 gigabytes of memory, allowing it to hold up to 13,000 songs or 900 CD disks with a battery capacity of up to 30 hours.
