Tuesday, May 20 is the day when Napster Inc. launched a new product, the world’s biggest digital music store with more than 6 million MP3 songs, just ready to be downloaded. The songs belong to the most important music labels on the market. Additional advantage consists of the fact that audio files will be compatible with any MP3 player, including iPods, and will be able to be burnt on CDs or transferred to other devices.

The audio files will be available for the price of 99 cents and a whole album can reach the price of $9.95.

This project will cause Napster to compete on the market with a similar service offered by Amazon.com, the only online music store that collaborated with a big amount of music labels, including iTunes, Apple’s service that has a data base of 2 million songs, all of them labeled under EMI Records.

Until yesterday, Napster offered MP3 audio files for a monthly subscription that gave users the possibility to download as many songs as they wanted, relying on the service “all you can eat.”

For now, iTunes remains the leader in promoting the legal and commercially digital music, handling almost 70% of the U.S. market. But, with the new Napster appearance on the horizon of digital music, the balance is believed to incline towards a new era of music where “consumers will be moving to an unlimited music model,” as Chris Gorog, Napster chief executive, affirmed.

However, there are many countries where piracy is still the only way music is downloaded.