The UK’s digital music player market is anxiously waiting on the results of an investigation from the European Commission into the prices charged by Apple for its iPods and iTunes.

Apple has been reported as charging British customers more than those in Europe with UK iTunes users in particular paying up to 20 per cent more than their French and German counterparts

An EC spokesperson admitted that the commission has made an “informal request” to Apple for information explaining why this is the case after a series of lodged complaints from Which? magazine.

The Office of Fair Trading referred the complaint to the Commission in Brussels but Which? principal policy adviser, Phil Evans, is still hopeful their case will make a difference in the investigation, according to Reuters Press Agency.

“We look forward to the Commission taking action to ensure that the market for digital music is a single European market and serves all of Europe’s consumers equally,” he said.

In September last year, Apple defended the price differential saying that “the underlying economic model in each country has an impact on how we price our track downloads”.

Mr Evans of Which? said the investigation would “probably go away if there was one price across Europe and iTunes stopped blocking other sites”.

UK iTunes customers pay 79p to download a song, whereas users in France and Germany pay 99 cents (68p).