Europe : Vodafone today announces the launch of a catalogue of 500,000 full music tracks on Vodafone live! with 3G.

The enhanced service will be rolled out to Vodafone live! with 3G customers in eight countries, beginning in Germany, with Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK following in the next few months.

Vodafone also announces that, since it first launched full track music downloads across an extensive range of new 3G handsets in November 2004, over one million tracks have been downloaded.

With the significant increase in catalogue size, the company is also extending its search engine capabilities on the service to help customers find the tracks they want, in the way they want.

"The initial response to the full track music service has been very encouraging and following customer research we have upgraded the experience further", said Guy Laurence, Consumer Marketing Director, Vodafone Group. "We believe the extended catalogue is the largest offered by any mobile operator globally and we are currently developing more 3G handsets compatible with the service."

Thousands of full track music downloads from global artists have been secured through Vodafone’s existing deals with Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music as well as new agreements for music from the catalogues of EMI and various local artists. Of the one million full music tracks downloaded, three of the most popular artists were: Maroon 5, "She Will Be Loved", Jennifer Lopez "Get Right" and Laura Pausini, "Resta in Ascolto".

Vodafone will continue to invest in its overall music offering and further announcements can be expected over the coming months.