In the digital music marketplace, the battle for mass consumer awareness remains essentially a duel between Apple's iTunes and Napster 2.0, according to a new study from marketing research firm Ipsos Insight, though its TEMPO Digital Music Brandscape study shows that U.S. downloaders have a significantly increased awareness of various other digital music services. U.S. downloaders age 12 and older are likely to have both Napster and iTunes top of mind, (31 percent and 27 percent, respectively); but, when prompted with brand names, 79 percent recognize the Napster brand and 57 percent recognize iTunes.

Moreover, other online services and music download stores have strong aided name recognition: Yahoo Music (49 percent), RealPlayer Music Store (45 percent), Rhapsody (41 percent) and MTV.com (37 percent). New entrants in the fee-based arena include Yahoo Music and MySpace.

Although Napster is best recognized, downloaders were more likely to rate iTunes (33 percent) as the "best" fee-based digital music service, followed by Napster (22 percent).

iTunes and Napster 2.0 also have the highest usage levels, with iTunes accounting for 43 percent of fee-based downloader usage and Napster 2.0 accounting for 26 percent, followed by Walmart.com (16 percent), Music Match (13 percent) and Rhapsody (13 percent).