As every one knows, the illegal P2P networks for downloading digital content are the worst nightmare of legal businesses like Apple’s iTunes.

iTunes vice-president, Eddy Cue declared that networks like Kazza or BitTorrent are the biggest competitors for the legal companies. “Our view is that our biggest competitor is illegal music and P2P services. We always thought that if we offered a better alternative then those customers would be happy to pay. Obviously … we will never be better than free … but we think AU$1.69 is a very competitive and fair price to pay,” said Cue.

Apple prices will start from AU$1.69 per track and stop at AU$16.99 for an album. Music videos are also available for download at AU$3.39 each.
“We have now sold over 600 million songs worldwide and have nearly 80 percent market share in most of the countries we are in.… This is our 21st time and I will say that there is no place that we have ever launched where music downloads have been strong prior to us,” said Cue.

In Australia the music industry is quite developed and 30% of the music that is commercialized is Australian. So the new iTunes is specially designed for Australians. “We have quite a few independent labels already signed up. This is the biggest launch of the music store we have ever done,” said Cue.

“It is certainly our belief that digital music buying is the future of music purchasing. Certainly our customers love it and you can see it in the younger generation. They buy a lot of music now and they buy it all online. That is what they know music as, they certainly do not know music as a record or as a CD, they know it as digital bandwidth,” Cue added.

The fight between legal companies and the illegal networks has just begun and it seems that it has a long way until the end. Last week, “the good guys” won a fight by shutting down an illegal torrent site used for indexing copyrighted material. But, unfortunately there are defeats too like the trial in Sweden which had no result. Peer-to-peer networks are known as networks for illegal downloads and the companies involved in the P2P are trying hard to get rid of this label but only with small successes.