Amazon is supposed to be preparing to launch its online music store this week (September 17th), although the New York Post has previously reported thatthe date is a moving target. Amazon first announced it would be entering the digital music download business earlier this year, although the move had been anticipated for quite some time.

Amazon plans to sell songs as unencrypted MP3 files, with roughly a million tracks from Universal Music and EMI. Universal and EMI have both previously agreed to sell music without DRM, and Universal has severed its relationship with Apple.

While Amazon’s music library won’t be as large as Apple’s, a million songs is nothing to scoff at. And Apple hasn’t been doing a great job of holding onto content partners.

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