Nicola Slade, who is editor of UK music industry news service Record of the Day, said: “No doubt, it’s a great move for consumers as it will help them listen to far more songs than they could listen before.”

Slade added, “The association with Amazon’s MP3 download store would serve as a key that will be there as a serious competitor for Apple and iTunes.”

“It is, indeed, the very first download store that has the ability to reduce Apple’s MySpace share.”
“The service will make consumer realize that there is another world outside of iTunes and the services like 7digital and other smaller services can pick up more business from them as well.”

Joe Wilson, who is lecturer in Popular Music at the University of Gloucestershire, said: “This move from MySpace to offer music through its network is to promote it as a radio service for free music, but you have to pay to transfer to MP3 players,”