Rhapsody’s officials announced their new "Music Without Limits" campaign, which will enable them to sell tunes in DRM free MP3 format through partners such as Yahoo! and Verizon.

Since its launch in 2001 and up until now the online music service offered streaming on-demand access to a massive digital music library, with a set of restrictions for the downloaded files. The monthly fees varied from $13 to $15, and even though the offer was rather affordable and significantly large, its market success was narrowed by its subscription service which wasn’t compatible with Apple’s globally popular iPod player.

With its initiative, Rhapsody is aiming to reduce the gap set by iTunes with its 70 percent of the United States digital music market.  

This seemed to be the best way of dealing with the market’s preferences and the explanation given by Neil Smith, vice president of Rhapsody, sums it up pretty well: "We're no longer competing with the iPod. We're embracing it," he said, as quoted by BBC News. He also added that iTunes’ success is also determined by the people’s tendency to stick with things that they are used to, comparing Rhapsody to TiVo’s early years, when people who used it loved its applications and thought it was a huge help while the ones who didn’t experience it, didn’t quite understand its use.

The decision to offer music downloads without any copy restrictions will involve all four major record companies – Warner, EMI, Universal and Sony.

A similar strategy was adopted in the past few months by other music selling Web sites such as Amazon and Napster, in order to increase their chances at a larger market share.

Rhapsody’s new offer will provide MP3 tracks at a cost of 99 cents and whole albums for $9.9.

The Rhapsody service is owned by RealNetworks and several partnership deals have been signed with companies such as Yahoo, iLike and MTV, in order to ensure a massive exposure and a good distribution process. Another deal will enable Verizon’s clients to immediately download their purchased tracks from Rhapsody onto their PCs, using the carrier’s Wireless Vcast music service.

The deal with iLike, introduces Rhapsody to the company’s more than 28 million registered users, which will be able to sample whole songs thanks to the new arrangement. This new option is expected to make the site very popular, as up until now users were only able to listen the first 30 seconds of a track, making it hard to reach a decision on whether it is worth paying for the song or not. Once the sampling session will be over and users will decide on clicking the buy button, three options will appear, allowing the subscriber to choose between Amazon, iTunes and Rhapsody for purchasing the song.

In order to attract people to check out the Web site and try out its new features, the company decided on offering $10 credits for the first 100,000 people who sign up the subscription page. The amount is enough for ten separate tracks or for an artist’s whole album.