Amazon MP3 Digital Music Store

Apple iTunes has got a serious competitor in Amazon.com's new Amazon MP3 Digital Music Store. Amazon MP3 is in its public beta stage, offering over 2 Million songs from more than 180,000 artists and over 20,000 record labels. Amazon now claims to have "earth's biggest selection of a la carte DRM-free MP3 music downloads," with all MP3 music tracks playable on any device. The MP3 tracks (encoded at 256 kps) without digital rights management (DRM) software can be organized using iTunes or Windows Media Player, and users can also burn songs to CD.

Amazon says most songs on Amazon MP3 are priced from 89 cents to 99 cents, with more than 1 million of the 2 million songs priced at 89 cents, as are the top 100 best-selling songs. Most albums cost from $5.99 to $9.99, with the top 100 best-selling albums priced at $8.99 or less, unless marked otherwise.

Customers can purchase MP3 downloads using Amazon 1-Click shopping, and with the Amazon MP3 Downloader, and then seamlessly add MP3s to iTunes or Windows Media Player libraries.

"Amazon MP3 is an all-MP3, DRM-free catalog of a la carte music from major labels and independent labels, playable on any device, in high-quality audio, at low prices," said Bill Carr, Amazon.com Vice President for Digital Music. "This new digital music service has already been through an extensive private beta, and today we're excited to offer it to our customers as a fully functional public beta. We look forward to receiving feedback from our customers and using their input to refine the service."