Apple today announced the launch of the iTunes Store in Russia, Turkey, India, South Africa and 52 additional countries featuring a selection of local and international music from all the major labels and independent labels.

The iTunes Store features local artists including Elka in Russia, Sezen Aksu in Turkey, AR Rahman in India, and Zahara in South Africa, international artists including The Beatles, Taylor Swift and Coldplay, and world-renowned classical musicians including Lang Lang, Yo Yo Ma and Yuja Wang.

Movie fans can choose from a selection of films available for rent or purchase from the iTunes Store, with many available in HD, from major studios including 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, The Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures, as well as local distributors.

All music on the iTunes Store comes in iTunes Plus, Apple's DRM-free format with 256 kbps AAC encoding.

iTunes in the Cloud lets you download your previously purchased iTunes music to all your iOS devices at no additional cost, and new music purchases can be downloaded automatically to all your devices. In addition, music not purchased from the iTunes Store can gain the same benefits by using iTunes Match, a service that stores your entire music library in iCloud for access at any time, from any iOS device. iTunes Match is available for purchase in the new countries added today.

iTunes 11 for Mac and Windows is available as a free download from apple.com/itunes.