London - U.K.-based social networking service Bebo announced on Wednesday an agreement that will allows its English and Irish users to purchase and download songs from Apple's iTunes Store directly from artists' profiles on Bebo, the Financial Times reported.

The deal marks Apple's first direct iTunes Store partnership with a social networking site.

Tracks will initially be available to Bebo's 8.8 million users in the U.K. and Ireland, but the experiment could be expanded to all of Bebo's 33 million users worldwide.

About 500,000 musical acts currently have created profile pages on Bebo, with around 4,000 new acts signing on daily.

Related Links:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/104bad26-1925-11dc-a961-000b5df10621.html

http://tinyurl.com/3ctyra (Reuters)

http://www.bebo.com