News 

The company says the agreement means that it can potentially offer hundreds of thousands of tunes to its customer base with prices starting at around one Euro.

The agreements are with three major music publishing companies - EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, and Warner/Chappell Music as well as the UK's collecting society for author/publisher rights, the MCPS-PRS Alliance. The inclusion of the Alliance means that additional works will become available in addition to those of the big three.

A deal with Warner Brothers was announced at the beginning of the year.

The service is being rolled out to United States,

ADVERTISEMENT

United Kingdom, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Poland. The company says that 'within weeks' it will become available to the rest of Skype's 94.6 million registered users worldwide.

In expectation of the rush to add the latest hot tunes to your Skype phone, the company has updated the Personalise Skype store. It now offers a more simplified user interface and a visual presentation.

The Personalise Skype area hosts all of Skype's digital content, including the new Featured Artist section. Each month the section will be dedicated to ringtones from one artist. The first to feature in the spotlight is Madonna and Skype will be offering ringtones for 'Push' and 'Sorry' from Madonna's latest waxing, Confessions on a Dance Floor, as well as past Madonna faves 'Like A Virgin,' and 'Vogue'.

The Madonna ringtones will be sold for €1.50 each. In comparison, iTunes will sell you the whole tune for 99 cents, although Steve Jobs has been having trouble holding the line against the music publishers who have wanted to charge more for popular artists. However, it is currently possible for Skype users to import tunes they already have on their computers for free. Skype has told us it has no plans to disable this feature.