MusicMatch launches its iTunes clone

MusicMatch's service can be seen as the first real "clone" of iTunes as it uses, just like iTunes, the desktop application to deliver and sell the songs instead of traditional website front-end.

MusicMatch has relatively good chances of succeeding as it claims to have delivered over 40M copies of its media player software, MusicMatch Jukebox, to Windows users. Definitely the funniest thing about the whole situation is the fact that MusicMatch Jukebox ships as a standard application with Apple's iPod, portable digital music player, for Windows users.

MusicMatch's store operates on same principles that Apple's does -- each song costs $0.99, can be burned to a CDR and transferred to portable digital music players. This is a sharp contrast to Buy.com's web-based music store that was launched earlier, which has severe restrictions on purchased tracks and pricing of tracks varies based on the record labels' decisions.

According to rumours, Dell is planning to launch its consumer electronics and digital music products by simply re-branding various products -- Dell will most likely use now-launched MusicMatch Jukebox as the Dell re-branded frontend to its own music store and its first digital music player seems to be re-branded version of Creative's portable MP3 player.

MusicMatch's store sells tracks only in WMA format and tracks have 160kbps bitrate. Music store is currently available only for U.S. customers and has a selection of over 200,000 tracks. MusicMatch has promised to increase the selection to 500,000 by the end of the year.