While Apple has steadily increased the number of iTunes tracks that sell for $1.29, Amazon MP3, Amazon.com’s online music store, has just lowered the price of many popular songs from 89-or-99 cents to just $0.69.

And these aren’t newly-encoded 1950s tracks 9 out of 10 octogenarians never heard of – the new price is for many current bestselling songs like Katy Perry’s E.T. and Bruno Mars’ The Lazy Song.  In fact, if you take a look at the list of Amazon MP3’s bestselling MP3 songs, more than 50% of the top 60 are now selling for $0.69 – costing listeners roughly half what they’d shell out for iTunes purchases.

Amazon MP3 sells unlocked .MP3 audio files which will play back on iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch), iPods, Android phones, Windows Phones and virtually every other device designed to handle digital audio.  And the online retailer recently launched their Cloud Drive, an online “digital locker” for files and media, along with Cloud Player, a Windows, Mac OS and Android app that allows users to playback the audio files stored there over an internet connection.

We’re disappointed Amazon still hasn’t released an iTunes-like application for PCs which would allow users to purchase and manage Amazon MP3 content outside a browser, but with savings this substantial the extra effort required to separately download and manage music purchased from Amazon, particularly in this economy, will be worthwhile for many users. 

Now let’s see if enough people make the switch to Amazon MP3 for Apple to take notice.