Technology

Napster has decided to take on Apple’s iTunes store as their competitor in the digital music service arena by launching the world’s largest MP3 download store. This store offers more than 6 million songs to users from all around the world.

This new store will have many of the top music labels and thousands of independent labels. All of the songs will be formatted as MP3 and will be compatible with many of the digital music devices that are available on the market including many cellular devices.

The new Napster service tries to take on Apple’s dominance in digital music by offering fans more songs without copy protection or digital rights management (DRM). Most of the six million songs on the iTunes Music store are available with Fairplay DRM, which prevents the songs from being played on most portable players other than the iPod.

Major labels in particular had previously been reluctant to allow online retailers to sell their songs without protection as a way to avoid piracy. As the industry outlook gets tougher more executives are willing to experiment or take a risk.

“We’re now moving from under the DRM cloud,” said Chris Gorog, Napster chief executive. “Now consumers can use Napster with any device,” he added.

Many of the songs will only cost users $0.99 per song and $9.95 per album. Napster has made it clear to Apple that they want to be a strong competitor. In doing this they will still be making their music compatible with Apple’s service. This means that any user who purchases through Napster’s service will have their songs synched into the users iTunes music library if they already have one set up.