According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon is "in advanced talks with the four global music companies about a digital-music service" that would compete with Apple's iTunes Music Store. Amazon seeks to differentiate itself from the other services chiefly by offering a subscription service that would come with a preloaded, deply-discounted, Amazon-branded portable music player. Amazon's likely partner for a digital music player is Samsung and the WSJ speculates that a subscription fee in the neighbor hood of $15/mo. is likely. Amazon has also said that subscribers could get discounts on CD purchases. There's no word on whether the service would be compatible with iPods, but my guess is no. However, I think there's a chance they'll see some success with their mobile-phone-like plan of offering discounted players with a subscription.