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Apple's iTunes has a new rival

Apples iTunes has a new rival Apple's iTunes download music service has a new rival.

The iTunes service is the preferred way of iPhone owners to get their favourite songs and albums on to their mobile. In the US it has a 70 per cent share of the download market.

It owes much of its success to the integration between the iTunes download and the omnipresent iPod – a listening device so popular that even the Queen is rumoured to have one on standby in each of her residences.

However, iTunes' slice of the pie could be a little smaller in future, thanks to online download service Rhapsody, which - for the first time - is making the MP3s downloaded from its site compatible with iPods and iPhones.

"We're no longer competing with the iPod," Neil Smith, Rhapsody's vice president, told Brand Republic. "We're embracing it."

What he should probably have said was: "We're no longer competing with the iPod. We're competing with iTunes."

Rhapsody will allow users to preview an entire song online before they choose to buy it or not - a service unavailable on iTunes.

Rhapsody is being tried out in the US and, if it proves successful, it could make its way across the pond to Britain.

Before that happens it is possible that iTunes might reduce its prices to see off new rivals.

Despite incredible sales figures iTunes hasn't had it all its own way recently.

US music star Kid Rock is refusing to place his albums on iTunes because he claims artists do not get paid enough for downloads from the Apple store.

Justifying the decision to BBC News recently, he said: "We all know the stories of the Otis Reddings and Chuck Berrys and Fats Dominos who never got paid."

Not every artist can afford to boycott iTunes though – Mr Rock himself admitted that he was losing ten to 20 per cent of album sales by not having a presence on the site.

A drop in the ocean when you are a multi-millionaire like him but not so easy if you're a struggling artist like Leonard Cohen, who recently had to hit the comeback trail in his 70s after his manager ran off with all his money.

iPhone news posted on 07 July 2008

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