Microsoft snubs UK for Japan music launch

With the paint barely dry on Microsoft's US download service, Redmond has announced it's to open the doors to another song shop - but it won't be in the UK.

This time, Microsoft is targeting the Japanese market and will officially open its online music store in the country on 20 October with a catalogue of some 50,000 songs, according to an Associated Press report.

Microsoft hopes to boost that to 100,000 by the end of the year and will charge 158 to 367 yen (80p to £1.85) per song and 1,300 to 2,200 yen (£6.60 to £11.20) an album.

There's no date yet announced for a UK launch but an MSN spokesman said the company would "be making an announcement in the very near future" about it.

The news comes after MSN officially launched its US music store yesterday, after the store's short stint in beta.

With the Japanese launch, Redmond appears for once to have beaten arch-rival Apple to the punch - iTunes doesn't have a Japanese arm yet, although Apple CEO Steve Jobs told a Japanese daily newspaper that he was aiming to open a Japanese iTunes in 2004.

Some Japanese music fans are suggesting that the market for legal downloads will be hard to crack. As well as battling against online music piracy - which both Jobs and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer have admitted is the biggest competitor to the nascent industry - Japan's CD rental shops may prove an issue.

The shops, which rent out music for a small fee, are often used by customers to make pirate copies of CDs on the cheap.