MSN Music: Microsoft's out to get iTunes

Well this is all very exciting. It seems that Microsoft has launched its own music downloads service over in the US as a rival to Apple’s iTunes. MSN Music allows users to download music for 99 cents (that’s 55p to you and me) a track. A whole album will cost $9.99, with around 500,000 tunes available in the initial stages.

There’s no plans as yet to launch the service outside the US, but it seems fairly inevitable that it will reach us eventually if the venture proves successful. It’s due to launch fully in the US later this year.

According to the head honchos over at MS, the encoding software they use means that tracks will have better sound quality to those on offer over at iTunes. We’ll be watching this little spat with interest.

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