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A website offering a guide to cheaper legal music downloads than iTunes is launched today.
Comparedownload.com has access to a combined catalogue of more than 10 million songs drawn from a host of online music retailers including Tesco Digital, Amazon and Apple's iTunes - which accounts for 70 per cent of all online music sales.
But its launch could prove to be a blow to iTunes, which benefits from offering the most compatibility with Apple's best-selling iPod player - but not the cheapest music.
The Standard conducted a series of searches for music singles and albums on a test version of the website and in all instances iTunes was undercut by one or more of its competitors. The site's founders, James Bott and Darren Sher, said they hoped the site would encourage more music fans to download legally by offering them more options. At present, legal downloads only make up an estimated five per cent of online music downloads.
Mr Bott said: "The inspiration for the site was born out of frustration at having to search through a range of stores to find the music I wanted at the right price."
Spotify has launched a new download service in conjunction with online music store 7Digital.
