UK Prices: 79p per track. Albums from £7.99 Gosh! That’s very reasonable. Although there is a fairly tortuous way of getting the UK version of the store rather than the US version.

So, Apple finally launched its European music store today, covering the UK, Germany and France. I’m not as impressed as I thought I’d be because of one big omission. The UK independent music industry makes up about 25% of music sales in the, um, UK. According to reports, Apple is requiring such independent labels to sign up with terms that would bring commercial suicide were they to be applied to the off-line world. Thus, talks broke down, and there ain’t no indie on iTunes in the UK. Indeed there are some US independents that are with iTunes in the US, but have refused to sign up to the UK version because of these terms.

This link from The Guardian outlines the situation. Furthermore MacWorld reports that “Many companies were only approached to participate over the last few days and independent label communities across Europe including France’s UPFI, Germany’s VUT and Sweden’s SOM have had little correspondence with Apple.”

However, Steve Jobs says that there are “dozens of indies” on the store. Indeed, he went on to say that there are 700,000 tracks in the store (the same as in the US).

In light of this, let’s take a look at the last 21 albums I bought (through Amazon, but I’m no shareholder), and see which we can buy through the iTunes Music Store, in the US and the UK.

This appears to conclude that there are licensing issues which persist beyond the ‘indie’ issue. The most amusing problem with this is the Celebrity Playlists, which omit the tracks you cannot buy. So Patti Smith’s playlist has nothing in it. Likewise, the front page has links to things that aren’t available or ‘are being modified’. Check out the Black Music Month, for 30 albums for 30 days. Or rather 5 albums for 30 days. All a bit of a balls up.

BTW, Airport Express debuts in Europe next month at 149 euros.