To be made available later this month, the catalog of songs includes hits from stars such as Britney Spears, Beyonce and Justin Timberlake. The move also makes Amazon's store the only retailer to provide DRM-free songs of all the major music companies.

Confirming the announcement, Pete Baltaxe, director of digital music for Amazon.com said, "Some people have resisted buying digital music because of the restrictions. I do believe we're adding new buyers of digital music. The great thing about the MP3 format is you can play the music on any of the devices."

Apple's iTunes continues to dominate the downloadable music market, but with the latest announcement, Amazon has emerged as a serious challenger to iTunes where only songs from EMI and other minor music labels are available without copy protection.

Amazon MP3 was launched last September and boasts of 3.1 million tracks in its catalog. The pricing of these tracks is also less than iTunes’ prices at 89 cents for individual tracks and $5.99 to $9.99 for albums. The main attraction of the store is that users can play their songs on any music player including Apple’s iPod and Microsoft’s Zune.

According to figures released by Nielsen SoundScan, while the total album sales have dropped by 15 percent last year, sales of digital albums have risen by 53 percent during the same period.
 

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