More than 50 million tracks have been downloaded from the European iTunes portal in the first year of operation, according to figures from Apple.

The portal was launched in the UK, France and Germany in June 2004, and now operates in 17 European countries.

The stores carry catalogues of more than one million songs, and feature content from all major music companies and over 1,000 independent record labels.

"We are thrilled to have sold and delivered over 50 million songs in our first year," said Eddy Cue, vice president of applications at Apple. "We would like to thank European music fans for making iTunes such a success."

However, the service is still under investigation by the Office of Fair Trading for its European pricing model.

UK iTunes users currently pay 79p per track, compared to 68p in Germany and France. The disparity is even more pronounced in North America, where US customers pay 53p and Canadians just 45p.