Rhapsody is all set to break the monopoly of iTunes when it comes to songs that you can listen to on your iPod. The Rhapsody executives referred to their endeavor as a means to provide “Music without Limits”. These songs will now be available to consumers online via partners that include the likes of Verizon Wireless and Yahoo!

Till now, Rhapsody’s reach was severely curbed due to its subscription offer. Under it, users could download unlimited songs but at a payment of about $15 or $13 per month. Along with that, Rhapsody’s service was incompatible with the most popular digital player-Apple’s iPod. But now, the songs offered by Rhapsody are in MP3 format and are hence compatible with the iPod. iTunes, which has the lion’s share, over 70 percent of the digital music market in US, is now under threat with a rival such as Rhapsody.

Neil Smith, the vice-president of Rhapsody was quick to add that they were no longer competing with the iPod but intended to embrace it. Despite the polite message, Rhapsody is all set to change its strategies and will be seen spending up to $50 million on marketing in media space over the coming year.

Rhapsody will meanwhile continue its association with MTV and iLike, an immensely popular application on Facebook which is a social networking site. Although Apple should be seeing red by now, it seems unconcerned. That may be because in spite of other online digital stores like Wal-Mart, Amazon.com and Napster, iTunes is still the biggest US music retailer with over five billion songs sold since its launch in 2003. Time will tell whether iTunes is still able to hold its own in this rat race.