The service, , offers personal rights use, including burning songs on to an unlimited number of CDs for personal use, listening to songs on an unlimited number of iPods and playing songs on up to three Macs, as well as using music on iMovie and iDVD. However, users will need the very latest Mac equipped with iTunes 4 and OSX version 10.1.5 or later to use the service.
Only around 3% of computers are Macs.
Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, said: "Consumers don't like to be treated like criminals and artists don't want their valuable work stolen. The iTunes Music Store offers a groundbreaking solution for both."
Users can listen to a free 30-second preview of any song in the store. Individual songs will cost 99 cents, while whole albums can be downloaded for $9.99 (拢6.28).
Music companies are coming to terms with the fact that they are unlikely to prevent music from being downloaded from the internet for free and are now looking at ways of regulating it. Apple plans to wait eight months before making the service available to PC users.
At the same time, Apple announced it was launching a new version of its iPod, the personal stereo that can store 7,500 songs.
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