Napster ready to rumble with iTunes

Ready to take on iTunes, Napster, the music sharing system that started it all, on Tuesday launched its first MP3 music store, free of restrictive digital rights management protection  to compete head-to-head with Apple’s iTunes.

Napster is only the second MP3 music store to offer storewide DRM-free tracks (which can play on any gadget). Amazon was the first.

For much of the decade, major record labels refused to license their music for downloading as MP3s. But steep annual declines in CD sales and the growing dominance of Apple Inc.'s iPod music players and its iTunes Music Store led the labels to ease that position last year to remain competitive.

With its MP3 store Napster’s music can now play on the iPod and the price to download a single track is at what is practically the industry standard of $0.99, and albums start at $9.95.

Napster, which has a music catalog of over 6 million tracks, recently stated that it had about 760,000 subscribers as of March 2008.