Major record labels have entered into an agreement with the largest computer maker in the world, HP along with Omnifone, to establish a European-based music store in order to provide unlimited music to its users. Omnifone is a company that specializes in cloud-based unlimited music services.

This brings HP in direct competition with Apple's iTunes and also is move to tackle online music piracy. Apple's iTunes store recorded sales worth $4.2 billion in 2009 and thus is the World's largest digital music service and has a large market share. The segment could face increased competition as HP already ships 48 million computers a year and has a market share of nearly 20 per cent of the global PC market.

A Omnifone announcement on January 25 said that the service will be called 'MusicStation' and it will be available on all 16 new models of HP PC in various European countries including the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, The Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland.

Rob Lewis, CEO of Omnifone said, "We look forward to extending our partnership onto even more PCs and territories, to ensure consumers have the ability to gain legitimate access to the world's music on every HP PC they purchase."

The four major record companies Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Music and Warner Music International and some others have agreed to offer access to their music for a monthly subscription.

Users will be charged a monthly fee and then will be allowed unlimited access to millions of tracks distributed by the four major record companies and leading independent music labels on their HP computers.

MusicStation subscribers will have a choice of 6.5 million tracks to choose from and the downloaded songs could be transferred to other devices as well.

They are also offering a free trail period of 14-day in which the users can download music over the internet on their HP computers. The users who sign up for the offer will be able to download 10 DRM-free tracks per month.

The service is priced at £8.99 in the UK, €9.99 in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and Spain, CHF14.95 in Switzerland and 99SEK in Sweden.