Subscription-music site Rhapsody, a joint venture of RealNetworks Inc. and Viacom Inc.'s MTV Networks, announced that it will remove all restrictions on its 5 million strong catalog of music tracks. This means that the songs will be delivered in DRM-free MP3 format, and they will also be available for preview in full on the website.

The move will attack Apple's territory, the iPod. Rhapsody is already the leading U.S. music subscription service, but it didn't work with the iPod. The new way of delivering tracks will make them playable on Apple's gadgets, thus taking on iTunes directly.

It's unclear how large a dent will Rhapsody be able to make against the iTunes-iPod money making scheme from Apple, but they are quite laudable for trying out to make available their full catalog in DRM-free format. Rhapsody will sell unprotected songs for 99 cents each and albums for $10. They will be playable on any device which supports MP3 and they can be copied for an unlimited number of times, as they are stripped of any form of Digital Rights Management technology.

The only restrictions Rhapsody will impose on its users is that full-song previews will be limited to 25 a month. The subscription service still stands, which is DRM-protected and, for $14.99 a month, you can authorize up to 3 PCs and three mobile devices.

Rhapsody America also reached a deal with Verizon Wireless to give Verizon subscribers the option of downloading songs from Rhapsody for two bucks, which sees one copy being sent to the phone directly while the other is downloaded into the home computer.

In February, Yahoo announced it is selling its digital music subscription service, Yahoo Music Unlimited, to Rhapsody America. After the service was moved over to Rhapsody, only three such services still operate: Rhapsody, Napster and Microsoft's Zune Marketplace.

Last month, Napster has announced it will start selling DRM-free tracks for 99 cents, a price that puts it in direct competition with Apple’s iTunes, and now Rhapsody. Napster’s Chairman and CEO Chris Gorog explained that the music store has decided to choose the DRM-Free MP3 format because of its ease of use and broad interoperability.

Launched in September last year, the third DRM-free player, the Amazon MP3 Store, has currently close to 4 million DRM-Free songs and is selling the tracks at 89 cents, making the offer even more interesting for potential buyers. In January, Amazon announced that it is ready for the international rollout, which is scheduled to happen sometimes later this year.

Rhapsody was launched in December 2001.