iTunes has dominated the MP3 music download market for some time now, and has yet to face a serious competitor. Online retail giant Amazon have recently entered the market, closely followed by high street retailers from both sides of the pond; namely Walmart and Tesco.

Whether they can threaten the strangle hold Steve Jobs and Apple have on the MP3 download arena is another matter. However now one of the major online social networking sites has thrown its hat into the arena to cut itself a piece of the very expensive pie.

Backed by Rupert Murdock’s News Corp., MySpace has teamed up with up music giants Sony BMG, Universal Music and Warner Music Group to offer its users a service to make Apple think twice about the safety of their position.

MySpace will be offering paid music downloads in a variety of file formats, making their offerings available to both iPods and conventional MP3 players. They will also be offering some free music downloads, as well as some other services to be revealed.

Backed by three of the music industry’s heavyweights you can expect MySpace to put in a serious challenge to iTunes’ dominance, and to have Steve Jobs looking over his shoulder at the massively popular social networking website.