Apple has said several of its main services - including iTunes and the App Store - have returned to normal after suffering from a four-hour outage.

According to the tech giant's website, the technical difficulties began shortly after 2.30pm Irish time on Tuesday afternoon.

The widespread fault, which was rectified at about 6.45pm, affected at least 12 of the company's services - including the iBooks Store, Apple TV, OS X Software Update, and the recently launched Apple Music.

The downtime came as Apple's Beats 1 radio station, which opened last month, exclusively announced the nominees for the MTV Video Music Awards. Its tagline is "worldwide, always on".

Taylor Swift leads the VMAs with nine nominations - with her star-studded music video for Bad Blood being shortlisted in seven categories. Another of her hits, Blank Space, received nods in two categories.

Ed Sheeran has six nominations - and both stars are joined in the Video of the Year category by Lamar, Beyonce and Mark Ronson.

Multiple regions appeared to be affected by the glitch - with users in Asia, Europe and the Americas all experiencing issues.

Apple, which will be reporting its third-quarter financial results later this evening, said all Store services were affected, and that "users experienced a problem with multiple iCloud services"