Okay first of all, I am a big fan of iTunes and the convenience of getting individual songs rather than having to buy the whole CD. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I bought a CD. With the latest news about Amazon’s Mp3 digital store I am quite intrigued by this for a couple of reasons:

1. Amazon has variable pricing 89 – 99 cents per download. Why would they want to vary the price? Well listening to National Public Radio this morning the Amazon spokes person mentioned that because of the record companies certain albums have different costs and therefore they pass that savings on to the customer downloading the mp3. Good move? Not clear yet, but Steve Jobs’ comment about their customers liking the 99 cent download because it’s less confusing might be true to some extent. However, for someone who downloads a thousand songs a year they’d save $100 bucks if the price were 89 cents.
2. The format! This is the biggest thing in my mind. I love Apple! But the AAC locked format that iTunes uses is ridiculous. I can’t tell you how many times I have wanted to simply place a purchased iTunes song in my personal home video of my kids and get the message that it cannot be done. Ya I know there are hacks and work arounds to get past the locked format, but come one…I am buying the music. As long as I am not reselling or pushing it all out through a p2p network I should be able to have some more flexibility on what devices I can play it on. Every Amazon mp3 will come without the DRM software – this is good news for all music players out there, including the iPod.

According to NPR, Amazon might be the first player in the online music world to compete with Apply iTunes, well, we will have to wait and see.