HELSINKI – Hewlett-Packard, the world's biggest maker of PCs, will launch a digital music service across key European markets on Monday, hoping to benefit from consumers' rising appetite for new types of music download services.
The MusicStation service will be preloaded on 16 of HP's personal computer models in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium and Austria.
The service has been developed and is managed by British digital music firm Omnifone. HP runs a similar service in United States with RealNetworks' Rhapsody.
Such new subscription services helped to lift sales of digital music 12 percent last year to $4.2 billion, industry trade body IFPI said last week.
"As the world's biggest PC vendor, HP has huge opportunity to create a viable competitor to iTunes due to its scale," said Rob Lewis, chief executive of Omnifone.
Apple's iTunes -- with a pay-per-download business model -- is the leading digital music distributor.
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