Like many others, if you purchased an iPod for your music, you're probablyguilty of relying on iTunes to power and control your content. It's too easy togo to the iTunes Music Store and purchase the latest tracks and listen throughyour computer, speakers or regular iPod. This is fine, unless you own more thanan average number of machines or, over time, migrate content to a new computeror upgrade your hard drive.

As iTunes Music Store tracks are primarily DRM wrapped, they are limited to 5PCs. However, you need to remember to de-authoriseiTunesevery time you move your music. It's too easy to forget. Luckily Apple areworking hard to include more DRM-free tracks in theiTunesMusic Store so it means you have complete control and authority over yourpurchased audio tracks and will not need to worry about have to de-authorise onone computer so you move across to another.

However, for the moment there is another big player in the market and that'sthe new Amazon UK MP3 store which contains downloadable tracks that are allDRM-free.

Amazon have produced their own MP3 Downloader which enables you to interceptthe music you purchase via their MP3 store and automatically move it across toiTunes, the Windows Media Player or other software you use to manage yourdigital audio. This means that your downloaded Amazon MP3 tracks appear iniTunes,and thus can be used on your iPod, without having to use theiTunesMusic Store.

The download here is for the Windows version. You can download a Mac OS X orLinux version of the Amazon MP3 Music Downloader from their homepage.

Disclaimer: this is no advert or promotional reviewfor Amazon. It's written to point users to a possible alternative solution. Withthe inclusion of additional DRM-free audio in the iTunes Music Store, users havethe option of two powerful audio stores and can make their own decision betweenusing the excellentiTunesor their web browser to purchase music.