Although there aren't any DRM-free songs on there now at midnight, Apple will probably make an official announcement in the morning and release the tracks then. One good note from the help file shows that if you've already purchased songs from the iTunes store, you can upgrade those to the respective DRM-free version as well. Stay tuned later today for more info. – Jason Chen

Apple Releases iTunes 7.2, Launches iTunes Plus (DRM Free) [MacRumors]

The MP3-only move is an obvious swipe at Apple, who is offering their DRM-free tracks in AAC. (Jeff Bezos: "Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device.")

Of course, a real swipe at Apple would be to offer the tracks for 99 cents, undercutting them by roughly 25 percent, but no price or launch date was mentioned by Amazon. Of course, you'll know when we do. Regardless, the music download market's starting to get real interesting.

Let's just hope Amazon has the balls to take it up a notch. Or rather, down a notch. 99 cents. Come on, guys, make yourselves a real competitor against iTunes and kick-start the market. The sooner we get this going, the better for all of us: consumers, distributors, the industry, and the artists.

Update: According to a rep, neither pricing nor other labels will be announced until launch "later this year." Looks like an end-of-the-month, surprise head-to-head showdown with Apple is out of the cards, so Amazon better have something slammin' up their sleeve with the lead time iTunes is going to have on them. – Matt Buchanan

Press Release [Amazon]