Microsoft has not announced a rival to iTunes

CNet has published a piece headed Microsoft prepares reply to iTunes, which appears to have misled people who presumably couldn't be bothered to read what it actually says. It does not mean that Microsoft has launched a music service (though there is no reason why it shouldn't, one day). Microsoft does, of course, provide technologies that are used by some music services, and it was doing this long before Apple launched iTunes. Microsoft is also trying to make its offerings more powerful -- it has been doing that for years, too, and will continue to do it. How that technology is applied (if at all) is entirely up to the people who offer the various services (if any). One recent example is Amazon.com choosing WMA9 to stream samples of songs.