Well, they say competition is good for consumers.

I checked out the Amazon.com mp3 store a week or two ago, and wrote about it here. I believe I said it was entirely possible Amazon could be the iTunes slayer:

(T)he tracks are recorded at 256 kpbs rather than 128 kpbs (which means much better sound quality), they are free of the restrictive Digital Rights Management software that means you can't play them on anything but an iPod or your computer, and ... Amazon had a lot of music iTunes didn't -- although the reverse, he said, is also true, given that iTunes has 6 million sings and Amazon, so far, only 2 million.

So I went to Amazon and checked it out. And I found that:

With the installation of a tiny little helper program, the download is incredibly easy and pops the songs right into iTunes for you.

The sound quality is much, much better.

The files play on anything, my iPod, my computer, can be burned onto a CD, and can be played on any other kind of MP3 player, made by Apple or not.

The songs cost either less, or the same, as iTunes -- and you don't pay extra for unrestricted tracks, likeyou do on iTunes; that's all Amazon sells.

And it was all done with one click, using my pre-existing Amazon account.

I guess iTunes thought they were looking like a threat, too, because today they sent me a little note letting me know there'd be some changes 'round the ole iTunes store:

We've lowered the price for iTunes Plus songs to 99¢ and expanded our selection to more than two million songs, including new albums from Iron & Wine, Band of Horses, Sharon Jones, José González, and more. With high-quality 256-Kbps AAC encoding and no DRM (digital rights management), the iTunes Plus catalog is the largest DRM-free catalog in the world. And that means you can play iTunes Plus music on any iPod or other digital music player and an unlimited number of computers.

Okay, Amazon.... your turn!