iTunes songs could soon be used on any MP3 player

London, Jan 7 (ANI): From now on, all songs on Apple's iTunes music service could be played on any MP3 player, the company has announced.

The move to lift copy protection from tracks bought via iTunes would bring Apple at par with its smaller competitors.

Earlier, the majority of songs bought through the iTunes library of 10 million songs could be exclusively played via the programme itself or on the company's iPods.

The announcement was made at the Macworld technology show in San Francisco by Apple's senior vice president of marketing Phil Schiller.

Apple is the biggest music vendor in the world and has sold 6 billion songs till date, reports The Telegraph.

However, the change, which will come into effect before the end of the year, will only be applicable to new purchases from the iTunes store.

Thus, consumers who have previously built up a library on their computers might have to pay for upgrading their music to the new format.

But, there'd still be many music players and mobile phones that won't be able to play songs in the format Apple is using.

That's because the company will continue to use its proprietary "AAC" files, instead of switching to the more universal MP3 format.Still, it is expected that the change may spur many hardware manufacturers to update their products. (ANI)