Financial times is reporting that more than 1,000 tracks by top Universal Chinese artists including Jacky Cheung, Kelly Chen, Hacken Lee and Alan Tam, will be available from Apple's iTunes stores in 15 countries, including the US, UK and Canada in a bid expand their range to online music consumers. The launch is aimed especially at the big overseas Chinese population, which has been able to access the music in physical form only through a limited number of specialist retailers. Thanks to the iPod digital music player Apple's online store leads the race in the legal download market. Napster considered one of the main Apple competitors, hopes to change that, last week Napster launched the first portable subscription service. Napster's service allows subscribers to download an unlimited number of songs and play them on compatible digital music players for a monthly fee. Apple does not offer a subscription service and songs downloaded from iTunes can be played only on its iPods