British music provider Omnifone disclosed in a Sunday announcement that it has inked a decisive deal with the world’s biggest PC maker Hewlett-Packard (HP) for the distribution of its MusicStation unlimited track download service, which will be pre-loaded onto HP computers and laptops sold in Europe.

Omnifone’s MusicStation service, which distributes music in DRM-protected WMA files, provides unlimited access to over 6.5 million music tracks from the four leading recording companies. While the service allows the download of the to the user's computer for online and offline play, the songs are playable only if the users keep their subscription active.

The HP-Omnifone partnership will bring forth MusicStation Desktop preloaded on 16 HP models to be sold in 10 European countries - the UK, Germany, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

The MusicStation service on the HP PCs will be ‘free’ for 14 days, during which time users can sign up for a monthly subscription, costing 8.99 pounds in the UK and 9.99 euros in most of the remaining nine countries where the service will initially be available.

Omnifone’s collaboration with HP comes at a time when online music service Spotify is gaining digital music market share in Europe; and there are rumors galore about Apple’s own forthcoming iTunes-specific streaming music, which will likely be announced this week.