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I have seen many other online stores trying to compete against iTunes fail, after using the new Amazon MP3 online music store I think that iTunes finally has competition. On September 25, 2007, Amazon put out a press release announcing the “Amazon MP3″ beta digital music download store. Amazon claim to have over 2 million songs from 180,000 artists. The online store is featuring DRM free music, mp3 encoded at 256 kilobits per second compatible with every single digital music players available on the market.

The Amazon MP3 digital music download store launched with an aggressive pricing schedule, songs will sell from .89 to .99 cents, and albums start at $5.99. Amazon pricing schedule seem to be variable pricing friendly making iTunes looking like the bad boy of the industry with their set pricing, but how good or how bad is yet to be seen depending on the user base. Steve Jobs admitted in the last Apple event that while the iTunes software is the most downloaded software for PC or Mac to manage your music not everybody buy their music in the iTunes Store.

How good is this digital music download store? For years I have trusted Amazon with my financial information, they have my credit card stored on their servers and I’ve never had any issues with them. I have purchase everything from software to books, and other miscellaneous items. I decided to try them and for my luck, they had a free song available for me to test the service without spending any money.

The first thing you get when you try to purchase music using Amazon service is new software, Amazon launched a new software both for Mac and PC to compliment their store. This is not a music management software, what it does is that automatically inserts your purchases to your iTunes or Windows Media Player software. You need to have an account to do all these, just to make sure I’m explaining myself on that.

The interface is very clean and easy to understand, you can preview the music before you buy it. You can check out information about the artist or the album, while is not as pretty as iTunes is certainly easy to navigate. Up to date not all the music that they are advertising is available for sale, I’m guessing since the digital music download store is in beta they will be rolling them out in phases.

I downloaded their software for my Mac, it installed quickly. Then I downloaded a song from “The Apples in Stereo,” ironic is like they choose the band that represents their target. It downloaded quickly and transferred automatically to my iTunes catalog, to my surprise it transferred with album art and all Meta data you would expect it to have. The song is not necessarily my taste of music, but the quality is outstanding.

I immediately received the receipt on my email account, while I choose to go the long route checking out, anyone can sign up for the Amazon 1-Click solution to make your purchases faster. The only reason I haven’t activated the 1-Click solution is to prevent me emptying my account in within a day. I think that iTunes Store has competition this time and a strong one, with better pricing schedules, easy to use interface and compatibility with the iPod and iTunes products, I can see many people switching to Amazon’s MP3 digital music download service.

Personally, I’m keeping iTunes. I spend less than $20 a month in music, book, TV shows etc. In addition, as a podcast listener, I’m very grateful that iTunes provides a great listing service to podcasters free. Don’t get me wrong if I was to buy an entire album from any artist I will be comparing prices. What is you take on this? Have you tried the new Amazon MP3 service? Share your experience with the community by leaving your comments on this post, and thanks for reading.