iTMS Expansion Now Official

Last night I noted the addition of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland to the growing list of countries with their very own iTunes Music Store. This morning, Apple confirmed with a press release what the country flag icons already proved.

The new Music Stores feature "songs from all four major music companies and over 1,000 independent record labels. The four new iTunes Music Stores offer the same innovative features, breakthrough pricing and seamless integration with iPod® that have made iTunes the number one online music service in the world. Since its launch just two years ago, the iTunes Music Store has extended its reach to more than 70 percent of the global music market with stores in 19 countries and more than 400 million songs purchased and downloaded worldwide."

In addition, Apple and UBS announced a promotion to give every Swiss citizen resident over the age of 13 a free song on the iTunes Music Store as part of their new "UBS Generation" and "UBS Campus" packages. UBS is offering song cards for music downloads in all of their branches, which can be used instead of a credit card to purchase tracks from the iTunes Music Store.

[UBS links updated; now point to English versions.]