Apple is well known for disregarding the competition.

But when an 800lb gorilla like Amazon walks in the room, even Steve Jobs takes notice. Amazon.com is now the new go-to music store. (Unless they don’t have the track you want, of course.)

iTunes will have to respond.

Remember when Amazon.com was just a bookstore? On Tuesday morning, the online retailer launched the public beta of its much-anticipated rival to Apple’s iTunes Store: Amazon MP3, which features over 2 million songs free of digital rights management copy protection, which means they’ll play on any computer, music player, or music-enabled cell phone. …

Each song is encoded at 256kbps, the file quality that Apple offers for its DRM-free iTunes Plus premium music selections, which it sells for $1.29 apiece rather than its usual 99 cents. Amazon’s pricing for Amazon MP3 ranges from 89 cents (including the top 100 best-selling songs) to 99 cents; albums are priced from $5.99 to $9.99.

It goes without saying that Amazon is aiming squarely at Apple, and it’s attempting to hit the digital music monopoly where it hurts–with regard to pricing, file quality, and versatility, all of which have come under scrutiny by critics. But this could also be a painful blow for eMusic, the online music store that has made a small name for itself by selling exclusively DRM-free music.

Amazon launches beta version of DRM-free music store | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone

AmazonMP3 beta

I expect Audible.com is scrambling too. Everyone knows what Amazon did to competing book stores.