The world's largest computing company, IBM, and five major record companies have announced trials of a new system for distributing music over the Internet.

The technology is aimed at countering music piracy on the Net which is costing the industry millions of pounds every year.

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Consumers will be able to pay for and download music through their computers at home but will be prevented from making illegal copies.

Sex and MP3 top list

Top of the list of searches for information carried out by Internet users are the three-letter words sex and MP3, according to Lycos.

On February 1, it became the first major Internet directory to launch a search facility for the highly-compressed sound files.

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While there are official MP3 Websites which pay royalties to artists, an estimated 80,000 illegal music files are available on the Internet on 2,000 sites in more than 30 countries.

The six-month IBM trial, beginning in the spring, is a product of the Secure Digital Music Initiative announced in December - a marriage of technology companies and the record business to develop a secure system for selling music online.

Cable modem pilot

A thousand computers users in San Diego, California, with fast cable modem access to the Internet, will be able to buy and download their choice of music from more than 2,000 albums available at an online store.

An hour-long album would take 10 minutes to download, the artwork could be downloaded and printed as well and the music copied to only authorised media.

The record companies taking part are the "Big Five": BMG Entertainment, EMI Recorded Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.

The British music industry launched a similar pilot programme, MusicTrial.com, last September.

The music industry is lobbying the European parliament this week on the Net piracy issue with a vote due to be taken on an EU copyright directive, which is being amended to take account of the Internet.