Looking north through the entrance hall of the Apple Store, Manhattan, NYC. Photo: Marlith.

Music lovers in Israel will finally be able to download their favorite melodies through Apple’s iTunes online music store, according to a report today in Globes, Israel Business News.

The cost to Israeli users will be about $0.85 per tune (NIS 3) and $8.50 per album (NIS 30), a bit less than U.S. users now pay.

According to Globes: “Apple also offers the Music Match service in Israel for NIS 90. This service lets users synchronize all the songs on their computer that were not purchased from the Apple store. The service scans all the songs on the computer and identifies those that are in the iTunes store and synchronizes them with all the Apple products of the user.”

The iTunes rollout in Israel comes nine years after the wildly popular service’s U.S. debut, when it was linked to the introduction of Apple’s highly successful iPod series of portable listening devices.

According to industry analysts, iTunes sales generated upwards of $5.6 billion in 2011, an increase of more than 25 percent from the previous year.

It’s not clear why the launch of iTunes has been delayed so long in Israel, although Apple said the introduction of the service to Israel was in conjunction with its launch in 52 other countries, including Russia, Turkey, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.