Apple announced today that its new music download service, iTunes, has become an instant success in the UK, selling almost half-a-million downloads in its first week of operation.

The download service sold 450,000 tracks at 79p each in the UK in the seven days since Apple's chief executive, Steve Jobs, came to Britain with the Grammy Award winning artist, Alicia Keys, to publicise the European launch of iTunes.

Across Europe, sales of tracks on iTunes topped 800,000, significantly more than its nearest European rival, OD2, which managed around 50,000 sales over the last week.

The response to iTunes across Europe will come as a welcome fillip for Mr Jobs, as well as for the five big record labels that have signed up to the service.

The record companies are hoping that iTunes, OD2, Napster and other legal download services will help then to compete with illegal download services that are rapidly proliferating across the internet.

Mr Jobs said as much during the launch in London a week ago, when he described illegal download services as "big business" with which iTunes would go into direct competition.

Speaking after today's announcement, Mr Jobs said: "After selling over 800,000 songs during its first week, iTunes is Europe's top online music store.

"In the UK alone, iTunes sold more than 450,000 songs in the last week — 16 times as many as OD2, its closest competitor."

The arrival of iTunes has already prompted a shake-up amongst its legal rivals. Earlier this week it was announced that OD2, was to be sold for £21 million to Loudeye, the US digital media firm that boasts the world's largest collection of digital songs.

OD2, which was co-founded by the former Genesis front man, Peter Gabriel, powers music download services for companies such as HMV and Coca-Cola and does not run a download service itself.

The iTunes music store in the UK, France and Germany allows users to play songs on Macs or PCs, burn songs onto CDs, and download them onto iPods, which have rapidly become Apple's other musical success story.

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