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Company spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said that she was unable to provide details of the licences, such as when they expire or whether the terms had changed but confirmed that the US iTunes Music Store will continue to cost 99 cents across the board.

The FT reports that record company executives privately accepted that while Apple's iTunes Music Store is by far their largest source of online sales - currently it has over 80 per cent of the market - they had little leverage in the

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negotiations, despite threatening at various times to refuse to renew Apple's licence to sell their music.

One executive told the FT: 'The labels need Apple too much right now.'

Last year Apple CEO Steve Jobs called label bosses 'greedy' for demanding higher prices for new releases and insisted that any change to iTunes' one-price-fits-all approach will only drive users to back to illicit sources of music on p2p file sharing networks.

iTunes customers will doubtless welcome the record companies' failure to raise prices for some tracks. However many would have welcomed lower prices for less popular, back catalogue material.

Apple's share price rose by 10 per cent in after hours trading following the announcement.

iTunes Music Store licences are agreed on a country-by-country basis. The US store was the first to renew, having been the first to open, in April 2003. The UK, French and German stores followed in June 2004. There are now 21 stores, though that may be cut to 20 should Apple decide that new French laws on multi-format support are unacceptable, although this seems unlikely.