Oooh, can'tcha just taste the excitement? There's only a day left before Apple's big London music event, and while it's certainly the Europeans who are giddiest (what with the long-awaited prospect of reasonably-priced song downloads from a service that doesn't make you want to hurl-- and the accompanying thrill of imminent personal bankruptcy), the rest of the Apple-watching world is also holding its collective breath, wondering what else might be in Steve's Magic Bag just itching to be unleashed upon the general populace in a day or so. Not that we're actually expecting anything more than European access to the iTunes Music Store, mind you, but when Apple goes to all the trouble of putting together a "special media event," there's always a chance it won't be a one trick pony.

Indeed, since Steve Jobs reportedly confirmed the June 15th Euro iTMS launch date when he spoke at D: All Things Digital last week, its arrival won't be much of a shock to anyone who's been paying attention-- and yet faithful viewer Chris Bassett grabbed a quick picture of Old Billingsgate Market with his mobile phone and notes that iPod silhouette posters block all the windows and "there is security coming out of every orifice." That sounds to us like there are some surprises up Steve's, er, sleeves and he wants to be sure that there's no peekin's. It's "evidence" of an entirely circumstantial nature, of course, but give us a break-- we don't get a Stevenote next month, so we're doing that whole "vicarious living" thing that's all the rage with the kids these days.

Meanwhile, the other downloadable music services in Europe are circling the wagons. Faithful viewer neopod tipped us off to a Macworld UK article which reports that Napster has just announced a brand spankin' new partnership-- one day before Apple's shindig, presumably as a preemptive thunder-swiping sort of maneuver. It seems that Napster has sucked up to British broadband provider NTL thoroughly enough to have secured a bundling deal whereby NTL subscribers can get a £9.95 monthly Napster subscription for the low, low price of-- £9.95. Okay, okay... that price includes a Napster sub and everything else in NTL's "Broadband Plus" package, which is apparently a bunch of cable 'n' Internet content that normally costs £3.99 without Napster, so it is a savings of over ten bucks a month.

And what about Europe's other big music service? Well, faithful viewer fabian informs up that BBC News is reporting the launch of OD2's new "online jukebox," SonicSelector, which still allows per-song purchases at £0.75/€0.99 each (less, for people who buy more), but which also streams individual songs for a penny a play. And gee, guess what? This also gets announced the day before Apple's little media clambake.

To be honest, we'd love it if this feature found its way over to the iTMS; the subscription model of forking over ten clams a month for all-you-can-listen-as-long-as-you-keep-paying just doesn't sit all that well with us-- but the chance to listen to a complete song for a penny before forking over 99 more to buy it? Heck, we'd use it constantly! Sometimes the 30-second previews just aren't enough; the first iTMS song we ever purchased wound up having Bono in it, for Pete's sake, and that alone almost turned us off of the service for good. Who wouldn't pay an extra penny to know exactly what he or she is about to buy? Although, frankly, we're amazed that the record labels approved such a system, given how trivial it is to record any sound playing on one's computer and save it in near-pristine form, but hey, whatever.

Anyway, the point is that Napster and OD2 both seem to have really... convenient timing with their announcements today. Call it a last-ditch effort to corral more customers before Apple waltzes in and changes everything. Will it work? Well, that sort of depends on what Apple has to show us all tomorrow, doesn't it?