ITALIANS MARCH INTO FRANCE!

Just a day after announcing its acquisition of British website Peoplesound.com (hitsdailydouble.com, 6/11), Italian music website Vitaminic announced today (6/12) the acquisition of French music site FranceMP3.com.

Vitaminic signed a definitive agreement for the acquisition of Eurekan Multimedia, parent company to FranceMP3.com as well as MP3France.com. Eurekan also owns MFranceP3.com, MPFrance3.com and WeSurrender.com. Vitaminic will pay approximately 9 million in small, unmarked, non-sequential French Francs—that’s roughly 1.37 million euros, 17.1 billion Vietnamese dongs, 8.16 Finnish markkas or 1.16 million good ol’ American dollars.

"The French online digital music market is one of the fastest growing in Europe," said Vitaminic CEO "My Name Is" Gianluca Dettori. "The combined entity built by Vitaminic France and FranceMP3.com will provide our company with a leading position in the French market."

"FranceMP3's excellent team, wide catalog, traffic and strategic partnerships, combined with Vitaminic's team, assets, content and technology, will make Vitaminic the leading digital music provider in the French market," said Vitaminic COO Andrea "Ring Around The" Rosi. "Vitaminic plans to continue expanding its services and outreach in Europe and the U.S. markets. As soon as possible we'll start an integration plan to leverage synergies, maximize revenues and minimize costs of the new entity. But for right now, we’re just happy making the trains run on time."

The new entity has a combined catalogue of approximately 56,000 artists, about 263,000 tracks and more than 1,150 record labels, delivering about 21 million page-views per month with more than 540,000 registered users.