New services to change landscape: the European launch of Napster and Apple offerings will have huge impact on industry.(Editorial)

It is hard to think of a more welcome start to 2004 than news of the arrival of iTunes Music Store and the second-generation Napster in Europe. The statistics surrounding the US iTunes store launch are staggering. Since April, it has gown to the stage where it was making more transactions than a US physical singles business that has existed for more than 70 years.

Of course, we should all be cautioned against expecting a similar immediate impact here, in the UK. For a start, however tough the singles market may be in the UK, it is not as troubled as it is across the Atlantic. Plus, UK internet and broadband penetration, while growing, still lags behind that of the US.

The take-up in the UK is likely to be much more modest in the early days of both the iTunes and Napster stores.

But what is so important about the launches are what they represent--high-profile, legitimate download offerings to challenge the illegal peer-to-peer services--not the immediate business that is created.

Having said that, we should be ready for the wider impact that they could have on our market. It is possible that the growth of a strong download business will accelerate the steady decline in the sales of singles, offering--as they will--a convenient, instantaneous means ...