BEIJING, Sept. 27 -- Amazon.com Inc has launched its much-anticipated digital music store, a move analysts say represents the first hint of real competition for Apple Inc's market-leading iTunes.

Amazon MP3, as the new section of the Web retailer's site is called, currently stocks nearly 2.3 million songs, all without copy-protection technology.

Shoppers can buy and download individual songs or entire albums. The tracks can be copied to multiple computers, burned onto CDs and played on most types of PCs and portable devices, including the iPod and Microsoft Corp's Zune.

Songs cost 89 U.S. cents to 99 U.S. cents each and albums sell for 5.99 to 9.99 U.S. dollars.

Major music labels Universal Music Group and EMI Music have signed on to sell their tracks on Amazon, as have thousands of independent labels. The company said on Tuesday that several labels are selling their artists' music without copy protection for the first time on the Amazon store, including Alison Krauss on Rounder Records and Ani Difranco on Righteous Babe Records.

Amazon's store competes with Apple's market-leading iTunes, which is also offering some songs without so-called digital rights management technology, which prevents unauthorized copies from playing.

Although DRM helps stem illegal copying, it can frustrate consumers by limiting the type of device or number of computers on which they can listen to music. Copy-protected songs sold through iTunes generally won't play on devices other than the iPod, and iPods won't play DRM-enabled songs bought at rival music stores.

EMusic.com Inc, another popular download site, also sells tracks in the DRM-free MP3 format but, like Amazon's store, does not offer music from some major labels that still require anti-piracy locks.

Bill Carr, Amazon's vice president for digital music, said it will be up to customers to use the music they buy legally.

To help stop music piracy, Carr said some record labels add a digital watermark to MP3 files that indicate what company sold the song, and Amazon adds its own name and the item number of the song, for customer service purposes. He added that no details about the buyer or the transaction are added to the downloaded music file.

Carr characterized the number of record labels that still insist on copy-protection technology as "a handful." But David Card, an analyst at Jupiter Research, said in an interview that "having two out of four labels doesn't cut it."

(Source: Shanghai Daily)