Until today, Rhapsody, the most dominant player in the subscription-based music market, has focused on the DRM-protected music rental model, completely off limits to the iPod and its subscribers' hard drives. That's about to change, as Rhapsody, a joint venture between RealNetworks and Viacom-owned MTV Networks, will open up a DRM-free music store in the mold of iTunes and Amazon. The new store will feature full integration with VCast Verizon Wireless phones, MTV.com, iLike, and Yahoo in a move aimed to complement, not replace, Rhapsody's subscription based-service.

Some have been skeptical of the chances of Rhapsody's music store, which features the exact same price as tracks on iTunes but lacks the full integration with the iPod that makes the iTunes store so appealing. It also seems that Rhapsody's music store is lacking a quality that could give it a major edge: a more thoroughly fleshed out product integration with its subsciption services (no doubt there were a whole slew of legal obstacles to that campaign). Nonetheless, it seems the mp3 download market has become increasingly competitive in the last year, even if iTunes is still the dominant player. [CNN]