Amazon offers 10 times more storage than Apple iTunes Match

(CBS/AP) Competition between Amazon and Apple is heating up.

Amazon has updated its cloud music player to mimic Apple's iTunes Match, but is offering 10 times more storage space for the same price.

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Apple's iTunes Match is a service that works in conjunction with iCloud to put all of your music in the cloud for access anywhere. The service will scan your music library and match it with songs in the iTunes Store.

Songs purchased on Amazon have always been stored for free on its servers for playback on mobile devices. Now the online retailer will scan a person's computer and automatically match songs found there on the person's storage space in the cloud.

Like iTunes Match, Amazon will upgrade songs of lesser quality found on computers or existing cloud lockers to files encoded at 256 kilobits per second.

The price is the same as iTunes Match at $25 a year. But Amazon offers free storage for 250 songs bought elsewhere, and will store 250,000 songs for paying customers. ITunes Match tops out at 25,000 songs.

The relationship between Amazon and Apple is highly competitive. Both companies have digital entertainment marketplaces, tablet computers and cloud storage services.