By Stevie Smith Aug 22, 2007, 12:54 GMT
Long-time leader in the music media download arena, the iTunes Store is possibly facing the stiffest ever test of its accumulated market dominance following news that several rivals are preparing a full-on offensive against Apple’s popular portal.
More pointedly, the likes of American retail titan Wal-Mart, renowned music channel MTV, and RealNetworks are all shaping up to mount serious challenges where knocking iTunes off its market pedestal is concerned, reports the Independent.
From Wal-Mart’s perspective, the Arkansas-based retail chain has this week announced that it will actively undercut iTunes’ prices via its own music downloads – all of which will be DRM-free (digital rights management) and playable on any digital music player, unlike iTunes content, which is strictly limited to the iPod.
Wal-Mart’s single track price for music devoid of the contentious copy protection will be $0.94, which is a sizeable reduction when compared to the $1.29 that iTunes presently offers its DRM-free content. Notably, Wal-Mart’s DRM-free price also cuts $0.05 off the $0.99 that iTunes charges as standard for its DRM-protected content.
In turn, MTV has pooled its thus-far misfiring resources with RealNetworks by combining its existing Urge music store with RealNetworks’ Rhapsody download service, which both parties hope will have more success against Apple’s online store.
And that’s not all that iTunes now has to face in terms of direct competition. Leading music companies Universal Music Group and Sony BMG are just two of the heavyweight backers behind the new Gbox music service. Gbox, which officially launched this week, approaches the market from a slightly different angle by enabling friends to purchase wishlist MP3 music downloads for one another as virtual gifts.
"We're committed to exploring new ways to expand the availability of our artists' music online, while offering consumers the most choice in how and where they purchase and enjoy our music," enthused Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group.
Since it launched in January of 2001, Apple’s iTunes Store has amassed more than 75 percent of the online music media download market. As of the end of July 2007, the store had accounted for some 3 billion media downloads.
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