After several years of holding out, hard rockers Metallica are now allowing individual song downloads from their albums on Apple's iTunes Music Store.

The heavy metal group cited an ever-growing number of Metallica fans using services such as iTunes as one of the reason it was taking the step.

The songs can only be downloaded on the iTunes sites in the US and Canada. Fans can buy the individual songs for $0.99 or the albums mostly for $9.99.

The group had previously allowed downloads of their albums online but had held out from offering songs individually.

Four of their previously released albums will contain additional songs not found in the original releases.

Metallica gained infamy among online music traders in the early part of the decade after being one of the first bands who took the Napster file sharing service to court for copyright infringement.

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