Apple said today it will lower the prices of music downloads from its UK iTunes service within the next six months to align them with prices in continental Europe.

The company currently charges its UK iTunes customers around 20 per cent more than their European counterparts.

Tracks cost 79p to download in the UK compared to 64p per track in Germany and France.

This is a price differential that the European Commission has ruled anti-competitive and breaches EU law, following a complaint made to it by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in early 2005.

Consumer rights organisation Which? welcomed today's announcement.

Its lawyer Chris Warner said:“It’s great to see the work of the European Commission delivering real benefits to UK consumers. We hope this is the first of many positive results like this.”

Apple is now negotiating the wholesale prices it pays record labels and said will reconsider relationships with any that does not lower its wholesale prices in the UK to the pan-European level within six months.

"We never comment on relationships with any individual record label but are working to bring prices in the UK in line with the continental European standard of 99 cents. However, we have not given any UK prices yet," an Apple representative said.

The price difference charged to UK iTune's users was initially brought to the attention of Which?. It passed the case on to the OFT in 2004, which in turn asked the European Commission to investigate.

A formal investigation by the Commission in early 2005 concentrated on Apple iTunes as well as the major record companies (SonyBMG, Universal, EMI and Warner).

The Commission believed that the agreements between iTunes and each of the majors, which allowed iTunes to sell the music online, were anti-competitive (breached EU law) and that this was causing the price discrimination.

"We complained about Apple’s price discrimination back in 2004 - so we’re glad they’ve finally agreed to give British music lovers a fair deal," said Warner.

“The fact they’ll soon be able to download tracks for the same price as European customers will be music to the ears of UK iTunes customers. We hope other internet companies - including online music companies - will follow Apple’s lead and match UK prices to prices in continental Europe."