Amazon announced that it would begin offering downloads from Warner Music Group Corp.'s song catalog. This is somewhat of a surprise. Universal Music Group joined EMI in the DRM-free revolution in August. However, the other two major record companies, Warner Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, have previously said they will not sell music without the protections because of the concern that music will be illegally copied and distributed for free.

Well, now Warner Music songs are available on the Amazon MP3 service. Amazon and Warner will also offer exclusive tracks and special album bundles. Amazon launched the service in September and has priced many of its songs at 89 cents each, below the standard iTunes price of 99 cents.

It's well known that Amazon's shop sells all of its songs without protection, allowing them to be played on a variety of devices, including Apple's popular iPod digital entertainment players. Amazon MP3 now offers a wide selection of a la carte DRM-free MP3 music downloads with more than 2.9 million songs from over 33,000 record labels.

Thus Amazon MP3's catalog is less than half the size of Apple's iTunes Store, which in turn sells mostly DRM-protected songs. All music on Amazon is encoded at a high bitrate of 256 Kbps, ensuring minimal loss of quality.

Since the beginning the online music store belonging to Apple had and has one goal in mind and that is to provide iPod possessors with their favorite music. As it did in previous cases, Apple ended up creating two different products, strongly interdependent, of which success depends on one another. Out of all the stores that offer similar services to those of the iTunes, none include an MP3 player in the package.

That is why I do not think you can say there is a direct competition between the Amazon MP3 and iTunes. Indeed, unlike other music stores, the MP3s from Amazon MP3 are playable on iPod and iPhone, but it’s hard to believe that the retailer’s store will manage to lure away too many iTunes’ customers.

The presence of a store which sells DRM-free music of the Amazons stature is welcomed especially by those who aren’t already iTunes customers. Still its numbers of tracks are still too low to pose a real threat to iTunes.