In just four days, 1 million songs have been downloaded at Apple's new iTunes Music Store in Japan, the fastest pace for the service's launch in any of the 20 nations it's now available, including the U.S., a senior executive said Monday. "We're extremely happy with the results," Eddy Cue, Apple Computer Inc. vice president of applications, said in a telephone interview from Cupertino, Calif., where Apple is based. "We think we've got a huge success." Apple has not signed a deal with Sony Corp.'s music division, which has some of the most popular Japanese singers and bands under its label. Cue refused to comment on how talks with Sony Music Entertainment are going but said he hoped Sony will join soon. The popularity of iTunes in Japan has dealt another blow to Sony because it has already surpassed the number of downloads Sony's affliated online music store gets in a month about 450,000.

This news article was written on August 8, 2005, quoting Washington Post.