Apple is not willing to step down from its first place in the podium of online music retailers. It has fought back against Nokia's Comes with Music campaign, with licence-free music offering.

The latest offer comes as a result of an agreement with major record labels, and it will mean that some of the music will have increased prices for the consumer, while previously every music track was sold at 99c of the US dollar. The music tracks sold at iTunes, Apple's online music store, will not carry the DRM copyright protection, which limited the number of devices where a music track could be played at.

Nokia's Comes with Music campaign offers free music for an entire year to consumers who buy phones under this campaign. The music is restricted to two devices by DRM. Music bought over that year, can be kept forever.

From February 2007, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs has been calling on record labels to drop the DRM copyright protection, which they did for Amazon, which is Google Android's music store choice, and for Napster, in an effort to increase competition against iTunes, which owns 70% of the US market share in this industry.

At the MacWorld Expo, Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of marketing, said that by the end of this quarter, Apple will sell all 10 million songs free of DRM licensing.

iPhone users will be able to download music over-the-air, and these would be automatically synchronized to a user's computer upon a synchronization.

[via Reuters]